The Master of Historical Fiction
Allan Massie salutes Sir Walter Scott, master of historical fiction and author of among others, Rob Roy and Waverley
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Concerning Frank Kermode
Britain's most distinguished literary critic, who turned 90 last year, has many achievements to be proud of. But does the indefatigable grand old man of EngLit ever regret his role in promoting
A Very Foreign Foreigner
Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell
The Sex Factor
Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter
On Being an Essayist
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
Travels with Tocqueville
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
The New Sophistry
‘Entertaining the reader is now the main goal of criticism’
Seductive Pursuits
Bite the Hand that Feeds You: Essays and Provocations by Henry Fairlie and Best Seat in the House by Frank Johnson
So Different From the Poetry
The Letters of T.S. Eliot — Volume 2: 1923-25
Guide to the Perplexed
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews
City of Memories and Regrets
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Maureen Freely
A Reader’s Guide to Thatcherism
As anti-Thatcher literature blossomed in the 1980s, it was tempting to argue that the Right had won the economic war and the Left had won the cultural war. But the real victors of the past 30 years