Washington Reds
The characters are duplicitous, torturing sexual predators selling Western secrets to the KGB: the baddies, right? Not in The Americans
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Deutschland the Dull
‘This is a German election and a Brit may argue you wouldn’t expect a flamboyant spectacle. But the current lethargy is a peculiar one’
Who Can Stop Hilary in 2016?
Three years away from the Presidential election, the Democrat and Republican candidates are already having a tilt at the Oval Office
Laureate of the Trenches
David Jones’s service at the front inspired an epic poem about World War I, “In Parenthesis”. Long neglected, it is ripe for rediscovery
The Zombie Argument that Refuses to Die
While it gives more credence to the naysayers than it should, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt excellently marshalls the evidence over the authorship of the bard's plays
The Tide Turns in East Sussex
The grand old towns of the south coast have certainly lost some of their former glory, but there is no reason why their best days should not be ahead of them
How Seminal Was Burke?
In his biography of the statesman, Jesse Norman presents Burke as of seminal importance to today’s conservatism, and to Cameron’s government. He isn’t.
Motivation of a Masterpiece
Why did Alexis de Tocqueville write Democracy in America? Lucien Jaume’s excellent work of scholarship helps elucidate the answer by investigating the man
The Birth of the Affluent Society
David Kynaston’s Modernity Britain, the fifth of his series of histories of Britain since 1945, reveals the late Fifties to be not a time of illiberalism and repression, but of a generosity
How Jesuitical is the Pope?
Mealy-mouthed and equivocal or just shy? Two new books help us to understand the motives and beliefs of the enigmatic Pope Francis
Salad Days and Egyptian Nights
Peter Stothard’s lifelong ambition was to write a biography of Cleopatra. The charming result says as much about the author as it does about the Egyptian queen
Treacherous Path to Safety
Cruel Crossing charts the history of the escape routes in the Pyrenees used by Spanish republican, then French Jewish refugees. It is a thoughtful memorial to these brave and desperate people