The Elusive Question Master
Jeremy Paxman's memoir is a moving and witty account of a postwar upbringing and TV career, but we learn little of the man behind the persona
Traveller, Gossip, Gardener and Wit
Roy Strong's diaries reveal an odd but witty and engaging character moving amidst high society
Pinned Down At Last: The Dean Of English Satirists
John Stubbs's biography defends Jonathan Swift from charges of irreverence and misanthropy, and evokes the roughness of his times
The ‘British Model’: Give Refugees Work
Alexander Betts and Paul Collier's "Refuge" is a work of politically engaged scholarship with both trenchant analysis and original solutions
Lasting legacy of an English idealist
Samuel Courtauld’s Impressionist paintings can now be seen beside those he bought for the nation
The master of human vanity
The new Pieter Bruegel exhibition in Vienna really is a once-in-a-lifetime artistic experience
The faces above and below stairs
Soutine’s hotel workers and Cézanne’s gardener feature in two London exhibitions of portraits
The man who set himself in stone
Murillo has gone out of fashion but an exhibition of his portraits may help to restore his reputation
Coloured By His Emotions
Howard Hodgkin reduces portraiture to something more essential than physical form
The tricky business of gender identity
What lies behind the troubling rise in gender dysphoria among teenagers? And should we separate the “T” from LGBT?
A distinctive melody in the melodrama of our time
Our founding editor looks back on a decade in which Standpoint sought to uphold the highest political and cultural values
Memories of a long lost Jewish world
The town immortalised by Roman Vishniac’s images where I was an infant was, for many, prosperous and contented before the Shoah