Book review – History
What the eye don’t see
The best books by good writers — and Philip Ball is a very good writer indeed — are sometimes the…
The tyrant and the cloud-dweller
The banning of Dr Zhivago in the Soviet Union had unfortunate consequences for other fine 20th-century Russian novels, says Robert Chandler
A fool’s paradise
A couple of years ago in Jamaica, I met Errol Flynn’s former wife, the screen actress Patrice Wymore. Reportedly a…
The kindness of strangers
It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome…
Cannon and ball
David Crane on an old soldier’s account of a 200-year-old battle that will never fade away
Barflies and buccaneers
In February 1924 the Hotel Florida, a ten- storey marble-clad building with 200 rooms, a glass-roofed atrium and red plush…
Rags, riches and respectability
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
How to survive totalitarianism
When this extraordinary book was about to come out in French four years ago its author was told by his…
Fabled splendours
Peter Parker on the age-old allure of the Indian subcontinent
Nights at the Opéra
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris and writes book with titles such as 1,000 Years of Annoying the French. Dirty Bertie…
Simply not Kricket
Why have the Germans never been any good at cricket? This entertaining account of the MCC’s 1937 tour to the…
Resistance and reprisal
Published to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Vercors, perhaps the most famous stand of the French Resistance…
City of a thousand and one nights
Ali A. Allawi on the fluctuating fortunes of Iraq’s fabled capital
Beware of Brits bearing arms
Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation…
God save England
The patriotism of the Great War’s finest poets was neither narrow nor triumphalist but reflected an intense devotion to an endangered country and to a way of life worth dying for, says David Crane
The poor man in his castle
Servicemen used paintings as dartboards. Schoolchildren dismantled banisters and paneling for firewood. Architects from the Ministry of Works acted like…
The stain of luxury
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen did a good job of showing how foolish it is to be obsessed by…
A powerful inspiration
Everyone knows about the Spanish civil war, first battlefield in the struggle that broke out in 1936 and ended nine…
Officers, no gentlemen
In March 1915 the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, with an already distinguished political career behind him, took the…
Garbo’s mystique
With two new biographies of Kim Philby out, an espionage drama by Sir David Hare on BBC2, and the recent…
Paving the road to hell
When presented with a 639-page doorstopper which includes 82 pages of closely-written sources, notes and index, most of us feel…
With death came glory
Eschewing the biblical advertising of ‘the promised land’ or indeed ‘a land of milk and honey’, the Conservative colonial secretary…
Put your lips together and blow
Paul McCartney says he can remember the exact moment he knew the Beatles had made it. Early one morning, getting…
Decades of grievances
Historians have generally not been kind in their assessment of Britain’s first two Stuart kings. Their political skills are regarded…
One queen, cut by two others
Queen Victoria was the inventor of official royal biography. It was she who commissioned the monumental five-volume life of Prince…
