If one goal of modern biography is to lay bare secrets and perversions, then Salvador Dalí must necessarily make a disappointing subject, for he spent a lucrative lifetime laying them all bare himself ...

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Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919 into a family that he describes as being of the media borghesia. He graduated with honours in chemistry shortly before the racial laws prohibited Jews from taking ...

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 ...

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 ...

Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No Sorcerer - Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey Thomas W Hodgkinson - There Was No Sorcerer Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No ...

It’s often said that there are five stages of grief, from denial through to acceptance. The family at the centre of the first of these three debut novels, Dutch poet Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s ...

The existence of Fashion depends on people buying more clothes than they wear out. If a garment is replaced only when it is worn out there is no Fashion, if it is worn beyond its natural replacement ...

Beginnings is a truly remarkable work of criticism which, for some reason, has had far less than its due share of attention since appearing in 1975. Reviewers were probably bewildered, not only by the ...

This proved a difficult book to read: put down for a moment it was appropriated by someone else and thereafter continued to journey furtively about the house, pursued by frustrated readers. Treat it ...

The political thriller has been perhaps the most successful fictional genre of the past decade, as Frederick Forsyth’s bank manager would doubtless testify. Yet very few politicians have tried their ...

Herculaneum, a town on the Bay of Naples that was buried beneath volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, has only been partially excavated. Some buildings stand open to the sky; others, such as ...