In Brideshead, the overriding feeling is that surely the punchline is to come. It never does

Leave literary reviews to reviewers rather than score-settling academics

Practically all the artists in the book are traumatised in one way or another, and all experienced war

László Földényi’s essays are a collection that will leave you feeling sharp and more cultured, says Tibor Fischer

There are still plenty of institutions worth mocking

Stoddard Martin delves into a world beyond police and courtroom, with its own code of right and wrong, in Gerald Jacobs’s Pomeranski

The busiest day of the publishing calendar offers hope for some, but ruin for many

Alexander Larman on William Sitwell’s luxurious history of eating out

Any history of the 1960s that neglects mass culture is not to be taken entirely seriously

Alexander Adams on Soviet Brutalism and where to read about it