Privileged Outsider
The cult of Benjamin Britten lives on in Paul Kildea's new biography, painting the composer as a perennial victim
Israel’s Tragic Hero-Victim
Unapologetic terrorist or revolutionary? Menachem Begin is rightly de-demonised, but not whitewashed, in Avi Shilon's new biography
The Philosopher and His Scholar
Noel Malcolm's magisterial new edition of Hobbes's Leviathan is a fine example of why, in the 21st century, scholarship still matters
Boffins and other Backroom Boys
Highlighting the importance of scientists and engineers in defeating Germany is the noble aim of Paul Kennedy's new book, but ultimately he goes too
Thomas and the Fat Controllers
Many in the 1970s predicted the demise of the railway. A new book by Richard Faulkner and Chris Austin tells how the foresight of
From Russia, With Erudition
Mikhail Shishkin's new novel — the first to arrive in English — is ambitious, complicated and protean. And brilliant
A Novelist With Ice In His Heart
J.M. Coetzee is a curiously chilly author and his Kafkaesque new novel is a parable about the writer's place in a world ruled by
The Few Who Rule The Many
Alan Ryan’s colossal new history of political thought is an ambitious but engaging piece of scholarship