How the Ancients can help the Moderns
Against all the odds, the study of Classics is increasing in popularity — and for very good reasons
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
How baffling to know Mr Lear
In her biography of Edward Lear, Sara Lodge engages with the contradictions at the heart of a man determined to both express and conceal himself
The spy who loved us
"The Spy and the Traitor brings out with agonising clarity the danger that Oleg Gordievsky had voluntarily decided to run"
Exiles fall out in La La Land
How Thomas Mann and Arnold Schoenberg quarreled in the irritable hothouse climate of the Los Angeles émigrés
To whom does Kafka belong?
In telling the story of Kafka's papers, Benjamin Balint’s new book explores a larger issue: who owns Kafka?
No art too good for the workers
Fernand Léger drew from popular entertainment and working life to make Cubism less inaccessible
Is this the real life or just fantasy?
It may not be possible to know if we are living in a simulation — but perhaps we don’t need certainty