It is almost half a century since the last full-length English-language biography of Jean Cocteau was published, and it has taken thirteen years for Claude Arnaud’s work finally to be translated from ...

Ever since Shakespeare labelled Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a ‘murderous Machiavel’, the word ‘Machiavellian’ in popular culture has meant being devious, cunning, scheming and quite prepared for the ...

Clients who visited the Mayfair studio of society photographer Hugh Cecil in the 1930s found themselves in a curiously exotic room. The walls were silver and the ceiling was black. Where the fireplace ...

On Wednesday 28 January 1756, the Jamaican planter Thomas Thistlewood made a brief entry in his journal: ‘Had Derby well whipped, and made Egypt shit in his face.’ The punishment was not a one-off; ...

Women are afraid of men. Not all of them, all of the time, but they know that men are capable of mixing sex and violence. Men sometimes do what women seldom, if ever do – commit rape. ‘After she was ...

This bestselling winner of last year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is largely set in suburban Melbourne during John Howard’s recent premiership. Dozens of characters are introduced in the first ...

LAST YEAR THE American historian Arthur Herman published a book on the Scottish Enlightenment with the subtitle 'The Scots' Invention of the Modern World'. James Buchan's subtitle is 'How Eknburgh ...

Taichi Yamada’s In Search of a Distant Voice was published in Japanese in 1989, completing a trilogy of novels which includes the ghostly Strangers, published to acclaim in English last year. His ...

It is often a challenge for historians to find the right balance between the human factor and the historical forces at play. The value of Archie Brown’s study of the three extraordinary politicians ...

Lustrum, the second volume of Robert Harris's trilogy following the life, career and political travails of Cicero, is a splendidly researched historical blockbuster of real human depth and political ...

Keeping track of the many clichés sprinkled throughout Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, I found myself assembling a sort of Reader’s Digest-style condensed version of the whole: ‘impressionable youth’, ...

The day before the armistice on 11 November 1918, Winston Churchill told the British War Cabinet, ‘We might have to build up the German Army, as it is important to get Germany on her legs again for ...