Books

China travels and travails

Rana Mitter reviews The China Journals and The Colour of the Sky After Rain

Unequal to the task

Jamie Whyte reviews Capital and Ideology by Thomas Piketty

PAYE makes the world go round

Jamie Blackett reviews Daylight Robbery by Dominic Frisby

Lawrence Wright’s pandemic prescience

An interview with the man who saw it coming

Leading by tantrum

Jeremy Black reviews Hitler: Downfall 1939-45 by Volker Ullrich

The post-Christian identity crisis

Three books portray a West unconscious of its past and uncertain of its future

A vengeful pursuit of political power

Natascha Engel reviews Unspeakable by John Bercow

Who holds the power?

Literary reputations are made and broken by a self-appointed clique of bien pensant liberal intellectuals

Masterful tombstone for a tudor bruiser

Hannah Betts reviews The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel

The twin prophets of pessimism

The novelist and the philosopher linked by a common fascination with despair