September 18, 2026

Politics, Ideas and the Arts

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Book reviews and literary criticism from Standpoint, from 2008 to the present.

All the World’s Royal Stage

Robert Whelan’s history of the Theatre Royal indulges in a bit of frippery, but otherwise artfully and humorously tells the 350-year long story of West-End drama

June 25, 2013

Books·Theatre

How Seminal Was Burke?

In his biography of the statesman, Jesse Norman presents Burke as of seminal importance to today’s conservatism, and to Cameron’s government. He isn’t.

June 25, 2013

Books·History·UK Politics·Westminster

Motivation of a Masterpiece

Why did Alexis de Tocqueville write Democracy in America? Lucien Jaume’s excellent work of scholarship helps elucidate the answer by investigating the man

June 25, 2013

Books·History

The Birth of the Affluent Society

David Kynaston’s Modernity Britain, the fifth of his series of histories of Britain since 1945, reveals the late Fifties to be not a time of illiberalism and repression, but of a generosity

June 25, 2013

Books·History·Modern Life·TV·UK Politics

How Jesuitical is the Pope?

Mealy-mouthed and equivocal or just shy? Two new books help us to understand the motives and beliefs of the enigmatic Pope Francis

June 25, 2013

Books·The Catholic Church

Salad Days and Egyptian Nights

Peter Stothard’s lifelong ambition was to write a biography of Cleopatra. The charming result says as much about the author as it does about the Egyptian queen

June 25, 2013

Books·Classics·History

Treacherous Path to Safety

Cruel Crossing charts the history of the escape routes in the Pyrenees used by Spanish republican, then French Jewish refugees. It is a thoughtful memorial to these brave and desperate people

June 25, 2013

Books·France·History

Clear Prose of Shining Brilliance

In her latest collection of essays, the New Yorker staff writer Janet Malcolm is at her empathetic, clever, shining best

June 25, 2013

Books·Literature

Is This the Great Italian Novel?

The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza has been hailed as the Great Italian Novel. If this is the greatest, then how dull must the rest be?

June 25, 2013

Books·Literature

A Right Way to Live and Die

James Salter is seeing something of a renaissance of late. His elegantly written Collected Stories confirms him as a writer of moving and humane prose

June 25, 2013

Books·Literature

ONLINE ONLY: A Lost Way of Life

Adam Nicolson's Gentry is a superb survey of the 600-year rise and fall of a class of landed Englishmen

June 4, 2013

Books·History·Social Affairs

For Her, It Was Always a Question of Honour

Two major biographies of Margaret Thatcher — one vivid and concise, the other magisterial — are essential reading for anyone who cares about the Iron Lady

May 29, 2013

Books·UK Politics

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