Phoney Freedom
Do smartphones rob us of our freedom, as Edgar Degas thought? Isaiah Berlin would argue otherwise
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Dizzy’s Wizardry (Boris, Take Note)
Douglas Hurd and Edward Young’s witty and original biography of the former prime minister presents him as a master of self-aggrandisement
Feud Of The Cold Warriors
Isaiah Berlin and Isaac Deutscher were the best of foes, as David Caute’s compelling presentation of a decades-long intellectual sparring match shows
The Making of the Mahatma
Dubious racial attitudes, an obsession with excrement and sexual eccentricities: Gandhi Before India reveals the unsavoury sides of the statesman’s character
Unreliable Lives of the Saints
Two new lives of St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas fail to straightforwardly present the legacies of these two hugely influential figures
Crying Wolf And Playing Chicken
David Runciman’s history of democracy occasionally succumbs to a Tocquevillian penchant for paradox, but his argument is brilliantly and convincingly delivered
More Ideas, Less Personality
A new edited collection of Italo Calvino’s letters appeals more to lovers of the Italian’s work than to the general reader, but is still deeply rewarding
Pynchon’s 9/11: Things Fall Apart
Thomas Pynchon’s new novel displays all the bravura imagination of the rest of his oeuvre, but sees the elusive writer finally coming to terms with the world
Boxing Clever
British television today is rubbish. But boxed sets — especially those dramas from America — are like bottles of fine wine, waiting to be consumed at the perfect moment
On Pilgrimage with the Hasids
'Uman has been called the Hasidic Mecca and the Hasidic Glastonbury. Overwhelmingly, however, the pilgrimage is rejected as “un-Jewish”, even by other ultra-Orthodox Jews'
Teaching China’s Anglophiles
'One student identified himself as working class and a member of the Communist Party. I was, however, surprised to see a copy of Roger Scruton’s Meaning of Conservatism bulging out of his
Uncritical Theorists Who Misread the Nazis
A new volume of reports by the Frankfurt School shows their number to be at best naive and at worst dangerously misinformed