This biography on Sir Stanley Rous and sport in the twentieth century is scholarly, balanced and well-written, says Lincoln Allison

Professor Jeremy Black discusses with Graham Stewart the craft and value of the political diarist

T.V. show, The Repair Shop, is just what we need in these dark and fractured times, says Adam LeBor

Do we really need another biography about Francis Bacon? The answer is emphatically yes, says Christopher Bray

The rambling and discursive nature of the writing lends Rupert Everett’s book an enjoyable appeal

The magazine that declares its main aim is to review books does anything but

Christopher North joins the devoted cult of the elegant, enigmatic bullfighter José Tomás

Dominic Hilton reminisces about his father’s hoard of bizarre avant-garde CDs, LPs and cassette tapes

Soviet cinema reveals to the West that life in the USSR was not all grey, unsmiling misery; instead, the Soviets were just like us

There is an inexhaustible public appetite for learning about the private lives of our idols, but they don’t make rock stars like they used to