Essex man who left his mark
Edward Bawden’s versatility has masked his huge contribution to 20th-century British art
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Musical mountain obscured by cloud
Two centuries on, Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata is still as enigmatic and sublime as ever
A dark universe of the imagination
The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars is a wonderful, strange, genre-defying book
A sufi sage for the ages
Ibn Khaldun has been repackaged to serve contemporary concerns many times, but Robert Irwin's biography cuts through the myth-making
Exodus the world ignored
Lyn Julius's Uprooted is an authoritative history of the decline and virtual end of Jewish life in the Arab world
Philip Pullman: siding with Satan
The fantasy writer is indebted to the Inklings, whose Christianity he rejects in favour of gnosticism
Is university for all working?
The helter-skelter expansion of higher education may be good for individuals but has sharpened value divides in society
How to succeed in Number Ten
Andrew Gimson's portraits of our 54 prime ministers are lucid, pithy and perceptive
Documenting a disaster magnet
Tibor Fischer’s new novel How To Rule The World is a bleakly brilliant picaresque
The unknown Americans
US artists of the interwar years can at last be appreciated in a revealing Oxford exhibition
The little town that just won’t lie down
Tiny Fordwich in Kent, still thriving after 1,400 years, faces a new invasion: London foodies
How the truth can set you free
Jordan Peterson is erudite and well read but 12 Rules for Life has much of the tenor of a typical self-help book