Rediscovering a Roman Thought
Lucretius’s poem On the Nature of Things was written in 50 BC, yet remains as startling as ever
Heartless Hero for the Hipster Generation
It is a fact that a high proportion of unreliable narrators of novels are intelligent, arrogant, badly-behaved, young males.
Dead horse, the flogging of
A collection of Martin Amis's essays caresses the bottom of the barrel
Witty and readable — but mind the gaps
The second instalment of Simon Schama's history of the Jewish people is typically energetic but has some serious failings
King Saul in his pomp — and dotage
Five wives and out? How Saul Bellow’s turbulent private life informed his novels
The Polish Pope and his Boswell
George Weigel's Lessons in Hope tells the story of the "pivot" of his life: his relationship with John Paul II. But what is the future for the Polish Pope's style of conservatism?
Human rights — all things being equal
Two books attempt to tackle the fundamental basis of equality: whence do we derive human rights?
A dark universe of the imagination
The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars is a wonderful, strange, genre-defying book
The Enduring Myths Of Catholic Inequality
Anti-Catholic calumnies remain deeply embedded in our culture. Professor Rodney Stark's Bearing False Witness hopes to refute them
Still waiting in the wings
The Fourth Reich concerns of the first 15 years or so after the war were essentially rational, but in the 1960s the term became “universalised”, exaggerated, and distorted
FDR, the President whom nobody knew
Robert Dallek's biography adds very little that is new to our knowledge of an almost totally inscrutable President
A Holocaust Family Tragedy
The story of the only child suicide of the Holocaust