From Chaucer’s Wife of Bath to Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot, women have known that men tell their own stories. As Anne (or Austen) puts it, ‘the pen has been in their hands’. But very often, men are also ...

Those of us who romanticise France are familiar with books in which a British person attempts to ‘live the dream’ there. They’re essentially travel books, evocations of sunsets and cosy bistros offset ...

Two cognate books depict London’s gay scene in the years before the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales. Peter Parker paints a wide historical canvas while Hugo ...

To be a ‘bluestocking’ is nowadays considered the pits. Yet in their heyday, the second half of the 18th century, the original bluestockings were respected and even admired. The trashing of this ...

In 1983, the BBC broadcast an eight-part dramatisation called The Cleopatras. I dimly remember the actor Richard Griffiths commanding the small screen as a shaven-headed Ptolemy VIII (‘Potbelly’). The ...

In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes published an essay titled ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’, in which he anticipated how we would spend our time a hundred years ahead. Keynes ...

Among the Indian novelists who arrived on the world stage after the publication of Midnight’s Children in 1981, Amitav Ghosh has long stood out for the range and consistency of his work. Indian ...

Only a selection of our reviews and articles are free. Subscribers receive the monthly magazine and access to all articles on our website. India's 'festival of democracy', or general election, begins ...

There is now a thriving C S Lewis industry. It would be very surprising if this were the only book about Lewis to appear this year. Of course, there is also something of an A N Wilson industry. It ...

When I first picked up this book, I must admit that my heart sank just a little. Does the world really need another history of the Dambusters? Even within the last ten years or so we have seen a dozen ...

The great attraction of the diary form for aspirant authors is its apparent simplicity. Many who would quail at the challenge of producing a readable novel or poem will embark quite confidently on ...

‘I have to change’, Miles Davis once said. ‘It’s like a curse.’ @rwilliams1947 tells the story of how Davis made jazz cool. Richard Williams - In Their Own Sweet Way Richard Williams: In Their Own ...