David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian who has made waves in his own sphere through his radical atavism (he refers often to the early Church fathers’ concept of the divine), his sympathy ...

On an autumn day in 1680, the 50-year-old Charles II charged Samuel Pepys with an unusual task. Over two three-hour sittings, one on a Sunday evening, the next the following Tuesday morning, the king ...

The image links back to Jane Eyre, sequestered behind the curtain at Gateshead with Bewick’s History of British Birds on her ...

Everybody with an interest in the everyday life of Italians under Mussolini’s dictatorship will have to read Richard Bosworth’s Mussolini’s Italy. Such a book was long overdue. Whilst we have numerous ...

Phenomenal Spirits - Two Women by Jacqueline Rose ...

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 ...

Clement Attlee lacked most of the qualities that make for success in politics. He was almost cripplingly shy and self-effacing. His appearance was unimpressive, his speeches uninspiring, his lack of ...

This is a truly excellent book, one of the best it has been my pleasure to read in the line of duty for years. Joanne Harris achieves everything a novelist should aim for, with no sense of effort or ...

It is a telling irony that a historical novel could be the quintessential literary work of the post-truth era. Perhaps no other novel better captures the malleability of truth than The Mirror and the ...

Twenty-six men were raised by Napoleon to the rank of marshal of France; only six fought with him at Waterloo. Jonathan Boff ...

ANYONE WHO WONDERS what feminism is for (as a surprising number of people do) should read this book. It is about a woman whose remarkable achievements were so overshadowed by those of her husband that ...

‘I’m singing! And not secretly but aloud,’ wrote Anaïs in 1931 (pace all feminists, I cannot possibly call her ‘Nin’; it suggests someone between a nun and ...