The new Duke of Buckingham now outranked every other nobleman in England. Moreover, his seemingly unassailable place in the royal affections fireproofed him against every criticism (and there was much ...

It’s not a bad life for the leaders of the British bourgeoisie! There’s plenty for them to protect in their capitalist system!’ So wrote Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, after his first ...

Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation by Danny Dorling; Exam Nation: Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone – and a ...

All for the Thrill of the Chase - Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco by Tim Blanning ...

The Wright Stuff - The Invention of British Art by Bendor Grosvenor ...

Atomic Achievements - The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science by Dava Sobel ...

Do you know what happened in Lyon in AD 177? Or in Milan in 1300? Or in Baroda in 1825? You probably don’t, but you shouldn’t worry: few do. Whatever happened, it was, by ordinary standards, something ...

In the Nancy Mitford novels there is a character called the Bolter. She is the narrator’s mother who lives in Kenya and parks her daughter on an unmarried aunt. She is always falling for unsuitable ...

I’m an avid reader of Donleavy's novels of the sexual picaresque, though I suppose that, as a femininist, I should be ashamed of myself. A new one, Schultz, and the re-issue of The Onion Eaters (1971) ...

With The Real Lolita, Sarah Weinman might be said to have invented a completely new genre: true-crime literary criticism, which is not to be confused with truly criminal literary criticism, which, of ...

Paul Gauguin kept house with a teenage ‘wife’ in French Polynesia, islands whose culture he is often accused of ransacking for his art. @StephenSmithWDS asks if Gauguin is still worth looking at. ‘I ...

I’m not sure what stands out for you when you think of the late 1990s – DeLillo’s Underworld? The dot-com bubble? Titanic? – but for me it’s two things: working (somewhat reluctantly) in New Age ...