Very Young Ladies and the Tramp
Peter Ackroyd's new biography shows that Charlie Chaplin was an incorrigible womaniser but a brilliant innovator
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Objectively Illuminating
A new collection of Bernard Williams’s essays and reviews serves as a reminder of the academic’s restless intelligence
When the House Came First
Today’s career politicians could learn a lot from John Biffen, an MP who hated soundbites
The Right Need Not Be Repulsive
In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin investigates the origins of Left and Right and finds solutions for the problems facing American conservatives today
Duller Than Double French
Tristram Hunt found Education Under Siege a useful book. It's nothing more than the dying groans of the blob
A History of Blood Hatred
How do racisms start? Francisco Bethencourt’s study of racial prejudices since the Crusades does its best to answer the culturally sensitive question
Their Own Worst Enemies
Jonathan Schanzer’s State of Failure persuasively argues that Palestine is not a country or state but a cause with the sole intention of destroying the Jews
Liberty Here, Tyranny There
The apologetics over John Stuart Mill’s shocking attitudes towards foreigners is the only thing that lets down Georgios Varouxakis’s otherwise excellent study of the political philosopher You can make a passable case
The Bard and his Collaborators
The plays included in William Shakespeare and Others may fall outside the bard’s official canon, but many of them display the virtuoso hallmarks of the great man
Both Ancient and Avant-Garde
A new expanded edition of E.E. Cummings’s Collected Poems demonstrates that, despites his brief sojourns in the avant-garde, the poet always found his way to a profound simplicity A terrible crisis has
A Visit From the Ofpoe Inspector
Craig Raine’s collected essays, More Dynamite, is a collection that blows holes in fellow poets’ work, and ends leaving the poetry landscape very battered and bleak Craig Raine has a passionate love
Banalities From Behind Bars
Bland, self-serving and naive, Vicky Price’s 'prison memoir' contains not a jot of insight or introspection