There is something magnificent about the ambition of Iain McGilchrist’s book. It offers nothing less than an account of human nature and Western civilisation as outcomes of the competition between the ...

In 1991, the dying days of the Soviet Union, a letter arrived at the BBC’s Moscow bureau addressed to me, as the service’s Moscow correspondent, with a startling request. It was from an intrepid ...

It shames me to admit that I came somewhat late to Henry James. In my adolescence I read The Turn of the Screw and, being young, largely missed the sly and appalling ambiguities of this ‘trap for the ...

Peter Hitchens’s book is a plangent lament for the old Britain, the land of warm beer and lengthening shadows on the village cricket pitch; but it can also be read as an obituary for the old Daily ...

It is strange to think that Rose Tremain is always more concerned with outsiders than insiders. To those familiar only with her best-selling, prize-winning novels like Restoration, Music & Silence and ...

Edward III has had a hard time of it from historians and biographers. At the beginning of this book, Ian Mortimer rightly points out the often extreme prejudice of Victorian historians against him, ...

In the April issue of Literary Review Nick Holdstock ended his perceptive review of Michael Meyer’s In Manchuria by asking where the ‘great books about country life’ in other parts of China were. Now, ...

In the course of the 1830s, a Persian prince visited Europe and was shown all the technological marvels of contemporary Western civilisation. He was duly impressed, but in summing up his impressions ...

There are two stories about Roman Britain. One is that ancient Brits were gentle, egalitarian souls, ideologically committed to the concept of community, passionate about the arts and culture, and ...

'SKINNY D'AMATO'- THE nickname followed by the Italian surname - sounds like a Mob guy. Yet almost every American male in the first half of the twentieth century had a nickname; and there were plenty ...

Some of the finest American novels were written at least partly in the hope of effecting moral change. From Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin through The Grapes of Wrath and beyond runs a clear, ...

Military history is a vast and popular field, ranging from rather sinister books on the Latvian SS, sold in shops run by skinheads, to works of major distinction by, among others, Antony Beevor, Carlo ...