Books
What a piece of work is man
Anna Della Subin’s new book explores how leaders become Gods
A most unreliable culture warrior
Not reactionary, just drawn that way
The cult of the father
A memoir of a family pulled apart by the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
This history of sport fails to bowl over
An inadequate night watchmen of the genre
Silver spoons and sob stories
What makes an heiress?
Our man in Hungary
The past is never very far away in Adam LeBor’s new thriller
Touchy-feely and not that new really
We’re more than our emotions
Much more than just a cunning linguist
Patricia Highsmith’s voluminous diaries paint a full picture of their author
Buccaneer of the Antarctic
The heroic age of polar exploration ended with Shackleton’s death
Tales of helping and helplessness
This selection of new fiction is marked by both novelty and tradition
Most Read
The Book of JO’B
James O’Brien’s aggressive incuriosity is becoming ever more embattled as his worldview crumbles
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
Thank God for Brexit
The EU is a bureaucratic monster and Britain is better off out
I don’t trust the British state
British institutions simply are not functioning in the interests of the people they are meant to serve
The lonely death of Henry Nowak
We must draw lessons from a horrendous and disgraceful case
Heart of darkness
Alexander Adams encounters an unflinching master of sex and death in Vienna
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
Let’s pay MPs less
MPs are getting another inflation-busting pay rise — even as the country they govern grows poorer
Zurbarán on Freud’s couch
An acclaimed new exhibition is full of overwrought symbolism and compositional failures
Pricing out the young
Britain’s labour market is faltering, and subsidies cannot mask the policies pricing young workers out.
Hope and stories
Bicinia (Claves)
Sing for victory
The days when recording a novelty single was a pre-tour duty are long gone
Reform’s reality gap
Behind the rhetoric of mass deportations, Reform UK’s numbers and logistics don’t yet add up
British comedy: a post-mortem
British comedy has become safe, stale and contrived
Dangerous liasons
Does Keir Starmer have a plan for dealing with Donald Trump?
Chopping The Onion
It is neither brave nor clever to portray dissenting women as insane