Uncritical Theorists Who Misread the Nazis
A new volume of reports by the Frankfurt School shows their number to be at best naive and at worst dangerously misinformed
A Long Way From Cable Street
Robert Wistrich's new study of anti-Semitism brilliantly elucidates how the Left has betrayed the Israel for which it once campaigned
Of Human Frailty
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings
Romping Around the Great Wen
In Tobias Smollett's great, romping 18th-century novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, our hero Matthew Bramble, a country squire, leaves his adored estate Brambleton Hall and spends a season in London. Writing
Germany Calling
Colin Holmes's biography of William Joyce challenges the sanitised image of the man who came to be known as "Lord Haw-Haw"
Stalin’s Man In London
The newly-published diaries of Ivan Maisky are an extraordinarily important 21st-century contribution to our understanding of the Second World War
Unreliable Lives of the Saints
Two new lives of St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas fail to straightforwardly present the legacies of these two hugely influential figures
Not for the Fastidious
Nicola Barker's The Yips is a mass-casualty train wreck. Pity her martyred readers
Mazower’s New World Order
Reading Mark Mazower is like being lectured by the best left-wing lecturer you'll ever have: he is brilliant but tiresome
From Jesus Sect to Imperial Faith
Two new works by Geza Vermes and Peter Brown eloquently and enthusiastically chart the progress of Christianity from Jesus Christ to the height of the Byzantine empire