Lead book review

The dogged women on the trail of Dr Crippen

On 18 November 1910, 300 women marched on the Houses of Parliament to demand the right to vote. Their protest was met with shameless brutality: punches, kicks, beatings and sexual assault from policemen and male bystanders. Three weeks earlier, a young woman named Ethel Le Neve had been tried for her part in the most

The Bloomsbury Group’s precarious paradise

The artist Vanessa Bell, née Stephen, the wife of Clive Bell, is enjoying the limelight this year as an exhibition of her work travels the country. Hot on its coat-tails comes Wendy Hitchmough’s beautifully illustrated new study of Bell’s life and art. As the former curator of the painter’s home at Charleston, Hitchmough writes with

The enlightened rule of the Empress Maria Theresa

The role of personality and charm in running a state is one theme of Richard Bassett’s superb book, the first English biography of the Empress Maria Theresa since Edward Crankshaw’s in 1969. The different parts of the Habsburg monarchy – Austria, Tyrol, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia and Milan – had little in common except dynasty, geography

In search of Pico della Mirandola, the quintessential Renaissance Man

Edward Wilson-Lee writes rather chin-strokey, erudite books for the half-educated general reader with a strong taste for big ideas and the ever-so-slightly weird –which is to say people exactly like me and very possibly like you. The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library (2018); A History of Water:

Red-letter days for Gilbert & George

James Birch is a somewhat mysterious art dealer and curator, whose first great triumph was mounting a Francis Bacon exhibition in Moscow in 1988. He wrote a gripping book about that adventure, Bacon in Moscow, and has now written an even more gripping follow-up, about taking Gilbert and George to Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai. Mounting

Emilie du Châtelet – a lone voice among Enlightenment thinkers

Two things that amaze me about the European Enlightenment are the brilliance of its achievements and the stupidity with which it excluded much of humanity from its circle. Say, for example, you were an 18th-century Frenchwoman who wished to advance human understanding of the universe by doing experiments, discussing texts and comparing hypotheses with other

Celebrating Miss Marple

There’s a big difference between being a fan and being a super-fan. Not all fans would be able to differentiate between the two, but every super-fan understands, at a bone-deep level, the difference between themselves and those of their ilk (fellow super-fans) on the one hand and regular fans on the other. The unforgettable theory

Wagner’s Ring is a mythic mishmash

Wagner’s Ring is an ambitious cycle of four operas relating world history from Primal Swirl to End of Days. It took 26 years to write, takes 15 hours to perform, a double-size orchestra to play and a specially built opera house to stage. Michael Downes, the director of music at St Andrews University, places the

Besieged Odesa is still caught in a conflict of identities

How can you break the mental manacles of an empire that has occupied not only your physical world but also your education, publishing, media, high culture and popular entertainment? In his endearing memoir of Odesa, Undefeatable, Julian Evans quotes the Ukrainian author Viktoria Amelina, who describes growing up in post-Soviet Ukraine surrounded by all things

Is it time for Jordan Peterson to declare his spiritual allegiance?

Alan Isler’s novel Clerical Errors (2001) features a troubled priest who mocks the faith he has largely abandoned. ‘How can any rational creature not see in the story of Christ the pattern of countless pagan myths, the universal romance of the sacrificial god, his apotheosis and his rebirth?’ Jordan Peterson’s new book stands this argument

Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty

Writing the history of the novel, even covering a limited period, is a challenge. No one could possibly read every novel that has been published. Even if you read 100 a year you would scarcely scratch the surface. It isn’t like writing a history of most other subjects, where the important matters select themselves. You

Books of the Year II

Peter Parker The New Zealand novelist Catherine Chidgey ought to be much more celebrated in this country than she is. Do not be put off by the fact that The Axeman’s Carnival (Europa, £14.99) is narrated by a magpie; whimsy is entirely absent from this highly original, thrillingly dark and often very funny novel. The

Books of the Year I

Jonathan Sumption Barbara Emerson’s The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century (Hurst, £35) is an outstanding account of Britain’s relations with Russia at a time when ambassadors mattered and Britain was the only world power. No one has explained the Great Game in Central Asia or the intricacies of European dynastic politics