George Orwell’s gardening prowess comes as a surprise

Alex Rowson treats us to glimmering passages of life at Philip II’s court

Richard Vinen offers a rewarding portrait of ordinary lives and increasingly mediocre politicians

The great man’s peerless poetry is not the “soppy stuff” of cheap romanticism, but a harsh, unsparing — and often beautiful — look at the world

The story of a shy extrovert, an unprincipled believer, a depressive funster

Art between the wars

A dialectical mind, Lawrence is modern in his resistance to labels

We remain interested in Tocqueville because of the power of his thought, not his life story

Bertrand Russell is almost too familiar a figure to be worth remembering

The relationship between Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh was one of all-consuming passion