An ‘Arch-Mediocrity who presided rather than ruled’ over a ‘Cabinet of Mediocrities’ – Benjamin Disraeli’s sneering dismissal of Lord Liverpool, prime minister during the turbulent years from 1812 to ...

Emma Smith and Andrew McConnell Stott both introduce their books by acknowledging that not everyone enjoys Shakespeare. Smith announces at the start of This Is Shakespeare that she has written the ...

Keith Houston’s history of emojis reveals that explicit images as well as political provocations, flagrant brand ...

John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers by Jean Strouse; John Singer Sargent: The Charcoal Portraits by Richard Ormond ...

Some modern scholars believe these to be forgeries written later in antiquity, designed to give the otherwise shadowy figure ...

When Churchill declared victory, the young people of the church paraded a full-size effigy of Adolf Hitler to the green and ...

According to the American academic William Kelleher Storey, Rhodes was able to go a long way towards realising his vision ...

No Sketching! - Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy by Charles Darwent ...

Annual global population growth is now just over a third of the peak level reached in the 1960s and the rate is falling fast.

My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud ...

Incredible but far from unusual is the story of Hercules’s maternal grandfather. Taken captive defending Kyiv from the ...

A New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912–45 by Michael Haag; The Durrells: The Story of a Family by Richard Bradford ...