Civilisation

Critique

The Koran: Scrutinising the Inscrutable

ERIC ORMSBY

Each new translation of Islam’s most sacred text offers fresh insights into its meaning. Yet there are still surprises in a book that is not only hard to read, but hard to know how to read, even for Muslims

Art

Orientalism Comes Out From Under the Shadows

MICHAEL PRODGER

A thoughtful exhibition at Tate Britain this summer lifts the veil of moral theory from Orientalist painting

Film

Magically Surreal

PETER WHITTLE

Far from sending out subliminal religious messages, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is an uncomplicated adaptation of a children's classic

Music

Mozart and the Mob

IAN BOSTRIDGE

Despite the name, television drama The Sopranos has nothing to do with opera - or does it?

Books

Democrats v Autocrats

PAUL WOLFOWITZ

The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan

The Great and the Bad

VICTORIA GLENDINNING

The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation by Ophelia Field

Tartan Tales

ALLAN MASSIE

The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History by Hugh Trevor-Roper

Revolutionary Passions

MUNRO PRICE

Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography by Renee Winegarten

Hitler's European Union

DAVID PRYCE-JONES

Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe by Mark Mazower

Love in a Snowy Climate

CAROLINE MOORE

Human Love by Andreï Makine

Television

Jon Snow and the Gilded Cage

NICK COHEN

Channel 4 News's anchorman has to disguise his political bias as neutrality, a pretence that is both insidious and unmanly

Theatre

Hitting the Boundaries of Polite Society

MINETTE MARIN

A new play, The English Game, brings social issues alive by creating characters, not mouthpieces