Iris Murdoch, The Virtuoso Of Virtue
The letters of the great writer reveal affairs with both sexes but also an intense intellectual and spiritual life
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Floating In The Void
Alexander Calder’s mobiles display both a musical stateliness and a satisfying sense of equlibrium
Thanks, Ma
The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma at 60 is still phenomenal
The Symphony: A Moral Vision Revealed In Music
Beethoven set the bar impossibly high but composers like myself still regard it as the ultimate challenge
Hume’s ‘Treatise’ And The Problem Of Early Success
A new biography sheds light on the afterlife of Hume's writings
When Francis Was Still Jorge
Cardinal Bergoglio's road to the Vatican
Stalin’s Man In London
The newly-published diaries of Ivan Maisky are an extraordinarily important 21st-century contribution to our understanding of the Second World War
Our Island’s Storytelling
How Britain discovered a lucrative new role as a global cultural powerhouse
Chelsea Or Montmartre?
The artists and writers who pursued the muse in fin-de-siècle London and Paris
The Sons Also Rise
What is it like to grow up as the child of a dictator?
Found In Translation
One of the greatest writers of short stories is finally getting his English-language dues
A Steppe In The Right Direction
Patrick Marber cuts Turgenev back to the essentials while Cumberbatch triumphs in a muddled Hamlet