ONLINE ONLY: A Lost Way of Life
Adam Nicolson's Gentry is a superb survey of the 600-year rise and fall of a class of landed Englishmen
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Royal Age Concern
The monarchy is in rude health but increased longevity could paradoxically spell the end of royal rule
Communist-Free
I taught English in Poland in the 1960s and can safely say there were virtually no Communists in the country
Rude Britannia
The UK Border Agency's woeful inefficiency means that visa applicants are stuck in the country, without a passport and unable to work, for months on end
Walking With Maggie
Mrs Thatcher often went on an after-dinner walk and she asked me to accompany her on several occasions. Years later, to my delight, she remembered these strolls
Can Science Replace Religion In Our Lives?
That materialists and ministers struggle to justify morality shows there is still a place for Christianity in intellectual and public life
More Things in Heaven and Earth
In philosophical circles, it was once heresy to challenge Darwinian reductionism. That is now changing
For Her, It Was Always a Question of Honour
Two major biographies of Margaret Thatcher — one vivid and concise, the other magisterial — are essential reading for anyone who cares about the Iron Lady
Russia’s Teetering Toughman
Ben Judah's rich and thoughtful account of the Putin years charts a Russian political system continually manipulated by a wounded leader
Spurning Old Truths
The Taste of Ashes by Marci Shore is a history typical of a modern, intellectual "non-Jewish" Jew, which downplays the impact of the Holocaust
Death’s Heads
Christian Ingrao's analysis of university-educated SS members is dense but compelling, drawing blurred lines that demarcate good and evil
Hard Lessons of Afghan History
Two new histories of separate conflicts in Afghanistan show that both the Victorians and a young Churchill struggled at the North-Western Frontier