At Home with the Letwins’ Salon
Bill and Shirley Letwin kept open house for open minds from Chicago to Cambridge and Hampstead
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Lords of the Prairie
George Catlin both recorded and idealised the vanquished native Indian tribes of North America
What To Do With the Huddled Masses?
David Goodhart's The British Dream isn't a scintillating read, but it is a thoughtful articulation of the UK's changing attitudes to immigration
The Moneybags and the Brains
The Bretton Woods conference of 1944 saw a historic meeting of economists that changed the world forever
Weathering The Storm
Global Crisis by Geoffrey Parker is a masterpiece of historical scholarship, but fails entirely in its stated aim of linking political disaster to a changing climate
Monstrosities of a Vile Victorian
Linda Stratmann's attempt to exculpate the Marquess of Queensberry of his myriad sins is a misguided stab at rescuing a the reputation of a truly wretched man
Russia’s Poisoned Hinterland
The Last Man in Russia by Oliver Bullough charts the unsavoury history of alcoholism, violence, abortions and nihilism in the former USSR. For all this, it is beautifully written
Transatlantic Vanity Project
Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein's published correspondence is a phoney exercise in literary bitchiness and mutual back-slapping
More Than a Curmudgeon
R.S. Thomas is frequently characterised as a misanthropic ogre. On the centenary of his birth, the publication of his humane Uncollected Poems belies this misplaced view
Long Live the Novella
Two recently translated European novellas, by Sophie Divry and Brigit Vanderbeke, are wonderful examples of this short literary form
Painter of the Strenuous Life
Where Edward Hopper found isolation, George Bellows heard the hubbub of modern America
Literary Biography is on Life Support
The art of recording a writer’s career will have to be reinvented to survive in the internet era