Non-fiction
Ditching Brother Leader
The date that rebel leaders chose for the final assault on Tripoli was auspicious: 20 August 2011 coincided with the 20th day of Ramadan by the Muslim lunar calendar, the… Read more
Heroics and mock-heroics
‘Poets don’t count well,’ says Ian Duhig in his contribution to Jubilee Lines — an assertion unexpectedly confirmed by Carol Ann Duffy’s preface. Admittedly, if the book did contain one… Read more
Bookends: Disarming but disingenuous
At first glance, Be the Worst You Can Be (Booth-Clibborn Editions, £9.99) by Charles Saatchi (pictured above with his wife, Nigella Lawson) seems a rather distinguished book, with its gilt… Read more
A safe pair of hands
Michael Spicer is too honourable to be a brilliant diarist. As he himself says, ‘I eschew tittle-tattle or small talk.’ These diaries cannot be read, as Chips Channon’s or Alan… Read more
On the way to the forum
In 150 BC, Cato the Elder arrived in the Senate House in Rome with an eye-catching basket of figs. This redoubtable statesman — often referred to as ‘censorius’, an epithet… Read more
Figures in a landscape
As you cross the Trent, you are very much aware that you have moved from the south to the north country. The next great divide is the Tyne, with the… Read more
Living the music
I used to read NME when I was young. Of course I did. I was obsessed by pop music in its every colour and my youth happened to coincide with… Read more
Scotland’s phoenix
The late squarson, Henry Thorold, was fond of pointing out that his Shell Guide to Lincolnshire was the bestselling of the series, not because of any intrinsic merit but because… Read more
Death comes for the archbishop
Posterity has always embellished Thomas Becket. After his death in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170 the Church idealised and canonised him; his tomb inspired miracles and became the most famous… Read more
Not quite cricket
To the French, Albion’s expertise in perfidy will come as no surprise. But centuries of warfare have given them time to learn. With their experience only dating back to 1914,… Read more
Where dreams take shape
The question of what artists actually get up to in their studios has always intrigued the rest of us — that mysterious alchemical process of transforming base materials into gold,… Read more
The attraction of repulsion
Take some boiled maize, chew it, spit it out, put the mixture into an urn, bury it, dig it up several days later, and Bob’s your uncle: the Ecuadoran delicacy… Read more
A fine and private painter
Prunella Clough was a modest and self-effacing artist who nevertheless produced some of the most consistently original and innovative British art of the second half of the 20th century. She… Read more
Going ethnic
Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, has been keenly interested in food for years. Besides being a blogger, scholar and the youngest chess champion in the… Read more
Prophetic times
The subject here is colossal, covering a substantial stretch of the later Roman empire, the last years of the Persian empire, the conversion of the Arabs, the spread of Christianity… Read more
Pawns in the game
The authors of this book have attempted a difficult thing: to ‘write about something that could never be known’. Here is a terrific and scary story about a group of… Read more
Special providence …
When Ed Smith became a full-time professional cricketer for Kent in 1999 the county side was preparing for the new millennium by shedding anything that smacked of old-fashioned amateurism. Professionalism… Read more
Searching for a saviour
The central themes of Russian history have remained constant for over a millennium. Russia’s vast spaces and lack of any natural borders have always made her inhabitants terrified of invasion.… Read more
A gruesome sort
Everybody knows that the heart pumps blood around the body, and that a man called William Harvey somehow discovered this fact. Before Harvey, people thought that blood moved around the… Read more
Ways of making men talk
Eric Rosenbach is a former academic who is now deputy assistant secretary of defence in Washington. Aki Peritz used to work for the CIA and now advises the Third Way… Read more
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