Lax on Tax
'Germans are obsessed with paying taxes - they are affronted by any state with little or not taxation - such as the British Virgin Islands'
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Italian Insouciance
The over-generous Italian welfare state means that for all the belt-tightening, most people in the country still enjoy la dolce vita
Gift for Greece
Spirit of London 2012? The best thing that could happen to the Olympic Games would be to send them home
Out of the Fire
Was Jean Sibelius's newly discovered Eighth Symphony destroyed in one of the composer's notorious drunken rages?
Survivor of Stasiland
The death of Christa Wolf has left Germany bereft of a powerful bridge of literary consciousness, whose universal work could talk to a once-divided nation
Powell’s Penpal
A new limited-edition paperback documents the charming correspondence between US book collector Robert Vanderbilt and Anthony Powell
Fussball über alles
The German film Der Ganz Grosse Traum shows the delightful story of the first Anglo-German conflict (football match, that is)
Matthew Carr
After leaving art school, Matthew specialised in drawing nudes, executing compelling life-size studies of young contemporaries. When he subsequently confined himself to carrying out portrait commissions, the careerist approach proved stultifying. The
The Tartar Terminator
The unheralded Kazakh Rashid Nezhmetdinov was universally admired by his peers for his astonishing attacking ferocity
Naturalised Talents
British art has a rich European heritage. Tate Britain’s new show explores its Continental seam
Don’t Mention the War
Book review of The Wartime Journals by Hugh Trevor-Roper; edited by Richard Davenport-Hines
It Was All Rot About All Souls
Book review of All Souls and the Wider World edited by S.J.D. Green and Peregrine Horden