Mayageddon
We're all still here, so the end of the world was a false alarm, but the Mayans might never have predicted it in the first place
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
A Vintage Year for Acting
A glut of superb performances in 2012 reflects a rising general standard in the actor’s craft
A pithy retelling of Europe’s darkest days
Norman Stone's new history of World War Two Manages to cover the conflict comprehensively in fewer than 200 pages
Master and Commander
Churchill and Sea Power by Christopher M Bell exonerates the wartime Prime Minister of his alleged military mistakes
1878 And All That
George Weigel's attempt to codify a new Evangelical Catholicism is controversial and idiosyncratic, but has plenty to commend it
Poet, Politician and Schemer
Too often Thomas Wyatt's poetry is ignored in favour of biography, but not in Susan Brigden's fantastic new study
Posthumous Wisdom
A prodigious command of English, ingenious playfulness, an obsessive eye for detail: David Foster Wallace's essays trump his novels
A Tragic Loss of Artistic Talent
Mirabel and Hugh Cecil's In Search of Rex Whistler is a fine tribute to a major artist cut down in his prime
The Artistic Legacy of the Great War
The global impact of World War I changed the arts forever. Its effects are still felt a century later
Nations United in Hypocrisy
The UN general general assembly displays the limits of multilateralism as the debate on the Palestinians' observer status showed
Kultur Shock
‘Journalists discussed the prospective disappearance of their newspapers as if they were watching their own funeral but not quite believing their eyes’
The Socialism of Fools
A discussion of Jews, the Left and the new anti-Semitism