The master of human vanity
The new Pieter Bruegel exhibition in Vienna really is a once-in-a-lifetime artistic experience
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Lionel Trilling: America’s Matthew Arnold
The great critic’s letters reveal his struggles with anti-Semitism and disillusion with Marxism
King Saul in his pomp — and dotage
Five wives and out? How Saul Bellow’s turbulent private life informed his novels
New way to tell a terrible story
New graphic novels take on difficult subject matter: the lives of Hannah Arendt and Anne Frank
Acerbic enemy of cowardice
The latest volume of Frederic Raphael's diaries is a book full of bite and feline gossip
The link between art and heart
A new Barbican exhibition explores how two were often better than one in the creative process
Debt and damnation: Islam in Dante
Edward Said accused the poet of Orientalist prejudice — but he owed much to Muslim tradition
Nationalism is not a dirty word
Nationalism has returned to the front pages. The Western intelligentsia is appalled. Should they be?
Through the plashy fen
Stella Tillyard's novel The Great Level is a strange and elusive beast
Lasting legacy of an English idealist
Samuel Courtauld’s Impressionist paintings can now be seen beside those he bought for the nation
Poles apart, linked by one instrument
Chopin and Wanda Landowska were very different musicians with only one thing in common
Murdoch: a life on the risk frontier
Two very different books come as close as possible to explaining the enigma that is Murdoch and his extraordinary media empire