Hitler’s admiration has severely damaged Wagner’s reputation
Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music by Alex Ross reviewed
Know better
The Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag by Peter Burke reviewed
Going both ways
The Bilingual Brain: And What It Tells Us About the Language of Science by
Short stories to enjoy in lockdown
Philip Hensher chooses some of his favorite authors, including Chekhov, V.S. Pritchett, Alice Munro and Italo Calvino
‘A Russian vowel is an orange, an English vowel is a lemon’
Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor by Vladimir Nabokov reviewed
The concluding volume of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher is – as its predecessors are – a triumph
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Three: Herself Alone by Charles Moore reviewed
Ian McEwan’s anti-Brexit satire is a damp squib
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan reviewed
No one held Susan Sontag in higher esteem than Susan Sontag
Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser reviewed
America’s brutal borstals
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead reviewed
How Calouste Gulbenkian became the richest man in the world
Mr Five Per Cent: The Many Lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the World’s Richest Man by Jonathan Conlin reviewed
Hermann the Good German: the mystic life of Hermann Hesse
Hesse: The Wanderer and His Shadow by Gunnar Decker reviewed
Anthony Powell gets the superb new biography he deserves
Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time by Hilary Spurling reviewed
The personality test that conned the world
What’s Your Type? The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing reviewed
The short step from good manners to lofty imperialism
In a world increasingly shaped by encounters with other cultures, the English started to form theories in which their own evolved behaviour resembled the pinnacle of possible civilisation.
1968 and the summer of our discontent
’68 will do as shorthand. Most of ’68, as it were, didn’t happen in 1968. It was, at most, the…
