What’s in a Name?
In Literary Names, Alastair Fowler describes the surprising ways authors have christened their characters
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
The Spy Who Tricked Me
Ian McEwan's new novel Sweet Tooth is a brilliant exercise in deception
Not for the Fastidious
Nicola Barker's The Yips is a mass-casualty train wreck. Pity her martyred readers
Eliot Agonistes: Letters to and from the editor
The latest volume of T.S. Eliot's letters provide agreeable shocks and reveals the travails of both his professional and love lives
Can Romney Spring an October surprise?
The presidential debates are the Republican's last chance to seize the initiative from Barack Obama. A strong performance and the race could be back on overnight
Window Brothels Get the Red Light
The experiment is over. After 12 years of legalised prostitution organised crime in Amsterdam has risen, not fallen.
Boris’s 2020 Vision
By 2018 David Cameron will be ready to step down leaving the way clear for the London Mayor to swap City Hall for Number 10
Blair Baiting
A website, arrestblair.org, is offering cash rewards to anyone who attempts to apprehend the former PM. Interested, Desmond Tutu?
M. Flanby’s Holiday
French president François Hollande seems to find monogamy too bourgeois for his tastes but all these former lovers are proving de trop
Blind Ambition
In the wake of the Paralympics, a new biography celebrates the life of our greatest disabled serviceman: Horatio Nelson
Taking a Liberty
The financial crisis has produced a new wave of young libertarians but these radicals champion freedom over and above virtue
Barmy Weather
Flipping the world on its axis, moon dwellers and giant canons? A new translation of a lost Jules Verne masterpiece of course