As the title of his memoir made clear, James did indeed live his life in and through institutions. He was not unique in that ...

This is partly because Chabal – a historian of France and the son of a Moroccan-born historian of the Lusophone world – is ...

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 ...

Cicero's life was bookended by two momentous events: the fall of Roman Republic and the rise of the future Augustus. Llewelyn ...

In the long history of Western culture, it is given to very few to have an entire era named after them. Socrates sits within Antiquity, Leonardo da Vinci within the Renaissance; even Shakespeare has ...

Toni Morrison’s new novel is like the music that gave it its title. It is rhythmic, emotional, controlled even in its wildest moments, skilful, subversive and irresistibly seductive. It is born out of ...

Montefiore refuses to treat the Middle East as an exclusively Arab or Muslim arena. Turks, Persians, Jews, Kurds, Armenians, ...

Bob Dylan has been ducking, weaving and obfuscating for so long – been the repository of so many people’s fantasies and theories – that it’s well nigh impossible now to tell where the truth about his ...

Waiting for Permission - Deep into the Sixties: Britain 1965–66 by David Kynaston ...

At one point in Defining Hitler its author asks the reader the rhetorical question: why bother to read this book? For many writers this would be a merited act of authorial self-destruction. In Haffner ...

Every now and then, a serious scholar wins the lottery. An academic journal publishes their research and the article crosses ...

Most people will come to this biography with bemusement. They might wonder why the preposterously pink Barbara Cartland, ...