The Making of the Mahatma
Dubious racial attitudes, an obsession with excrement and sexual eccentricities: Gandhi Before India reveals the unsavoury sides of the statesman’s character
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
Crying Wolf And Playing Chicken
David Runciman’s history of democracy occasionally succumbs to a Tocquevillian penchant for paradox, but his argument is brilliantly and convincingly delivered
More Ideas, Less Personality
A new edited collection of Italo Calvino’s letters appeals more to lovers of the Italian’s work than to the general reader, but is still
Pynchon’s 9/11: Things Fall Apart
Thomas Pynchon’s new novel displays all the bravura imagination of the rest of his oeuvre, but sees the elusive writer finally coming to terms
The Apotheosis Of The Ego
The Viennese Secessionists brought a pioneering introspection to their bold new portraiture
The Sublime Soviet
Leonid Stein was a virtuoso player whose unexplained death at 38 robbed the world of his otherworldly attacking brilliance
Boxing Clever
British television today is rubbish. But boxed sets — especially those dramas from America — are like bottles of fine wine, waiting to be