Sorry – the Vikings really were that bad
Forget that guff about peaceful farmers with an interest in travel
The Modern Peasant, by JoJo Tulloch - review
You know that something’s afoot when Lakeland says so. Lakeland is the kitchenware company which has more of a finger…
Philip Bobbitt on Machiavelli, Obama and David Cameron
Few of today’s statesmen, says Philip Bobbitt, deserve comparison with the ‘seriously ethical’ author of The Prince
Dan Brown's latest conspiracy theory - and the powerful people who believe it
The novelist is not the first to say that we’re all doomed
Travel: Ireland’s wild west
Melanie McDonagh goes in quest of the Burren, with its ancient churches, rugged landscapes and extraordinary flora
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique at 50
Melanie McDonagh on 50 years of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
Don’t watch The Hobbit
The book is perfectly formed – the film can only spoil it
Fit to Party
There’s one sure way to avoid a miserable January: get your masochism over with in early December. Are you ready to pretox?
Can you trust a Christian?
Secular prejudice is fine, but religious belief is increasingly suspect
Cake Expectations
The rebirth of afternoon tea
The vagina fad
A puerile modern obsession with the V-word
Paris en famille
The French capital is much friendlier if you’re a child, says Melanie McDonagh
The right to squeak
Having a feminine voice remains a real disadvantage
Unsinkable drama
The last hours of the Titanic were a perfect tragedy. No wonder we’re still obsessed
A real-life whodunnit
The Saville Report into the events of Bloody Sunday is ten volumes or 5,000 pages long and was five years…
Christmas for the ladies
In Ireland, women used to gather to celebrate the Epiphany with cakes and gossip
Cookery Books: Back to classics
The truth is, we could probably all get by with three or four cookbooks; half a dozen at most, which…
The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses by Paul Koudounaris
In one Capuchin monastery in Sicily, the so-called Palermo Catacombs, locals used to buy a niche where their mummified corpse…
Don’t wait for One Day
The perfect soulmate is an illusion that can ruin your life
The secret of self-help
Follow one simple tip, and you'll never need to buy an advice book again
What women want
The Tories are desperate to regain the female vote – but they have a very patronising idea of how to do it
Vastly entertaining
It may not be quite true that the next best thing to eating good food is reading about it, but undeniably food writing has its considerable pleasures.
Bookends: The last laugh
In July, the world’s most famous restaurant, elBulli, closes, to reopen in 2014 as a ‘creative centre’. Rough luck on the million-odd people who try for one of 8,000 reservations a year. It’s also a blow for the eponymous young cooks of Lisa Abend’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentices (Simon & Schuster, £18.99), the 45 stagiaires who labour in Ferran Adria’s kitchen for a season in the hope of sharing in the magic. Ferran, you see, is no mere cook. With him, ‘hot turns into cold, sweet into savoury, solid into liquid or air’.
Adultery rewarded
To name Camilla as Queen Consort would devalue marriage
Smoke Alarm
The furore over fags
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