The Oldie

Iris Murdoch: Poems from an Attic, edited by Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson, Rachel

Hirschler and Frances White

A Short History of America: From Tea Party to Trump, by Simon Jenkins

A Short History of America: From Tea Party to Trump The brilliance of condensed history books is that they are an invaluable précis of all the stuff you vaguely know but should know better.

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Class act

When I began teaching in Keble Prep School, Enfield, in 1972, Ted Heath was Prime Minister and ‘educational technology’ meant a board that was black, a piece of chalk that was white and a felted rubber generally kept in an old Peek Frean biscuit...

Winnie-the-pooh at 100

Nicky Haslam on the Mitfords’ mother How to be a broadcaster – John Humphrys Guinness was good for Dublin – Mary Kenny on the black stuff

My Best Friend

An orphan at 69 – Griff Rhys Jones It takes two – Marks and Gran on how to write a sitcom Prince Charm less–AN Wilson on Prince Andrew

The madness of Peter Sellers

Women are nicer than men – A N Wilson The LA Pelés – Ian La Frenais plays football with Rod Stewart Geoff Love’s Big War Movie Themes – Michael Karam

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EDNA O’BRIEN, MY DREAM BOSS – MARY KENNY

Wild Irish horses

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until 10th August The artist Evie Hone (1894-1955) was born in a south Dublin suburb, and Mainie Jellett (1897-1944) in the city centre. Both came of Protestant families with marked artistic traditions, and were...

Behind the Scenes: The Dramatic Lives of Philip

The clue to Angela V John’s intriguing odyssey is in its catchy subtitle, The Dramatic Lives of Philip Burton. Lives – not life; each of them distinct and intriguing. Philip Burton’s childhood was a triumph over poverty in South Wales. Then there’s a...

Spring Is the Only Season: How It Works, What It Does and Why It Matters, by Simon Barnes

There is a moment when we first encounter spring that we might call pure joy. Often it is more delicious and complicated than that: it’s the excited, restless bewitchment experienced by Mole in the opening of The Wind in the Willows. When we are...

Get Carman: In Court with George Carman QC, Britain’s Most Feared Lawyer – The Man Behind the Advocate, by Karen Phillipps

JUSTIN WARSHAW Get Carman: In Court with George Carman QC, Britain’s Most Feared Lawyer – The Man Behind the Advocate By Karen Phillipps Biteback Publishing £25 This is not the first biography of George Carman – aka ‘Gorgeous George’ and ‘Killer...

Good show, Jeeves!

My University Hell – Griff Rhys Jones Robert Bathurst on playing Jeffrey Bernard Genius of Chas & Dave – Kate Garner, Chas’s daughter

Believe Nothing until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism,

Nevertheless, it is hard to see how April survived financially, save for by scrounging off rich idiots. One such had been gunrunning in the Middle East when ‘his plane exploded’. Another sank with his yacht. ‘All that was found was a floating...

Fairest of them all

The Suez Crisis – by Anthony Eden’s widow What a buzz! John Humphrys on his bees How U are you? Nancy Mitford and class by Mary Killen

Goethe: His Faustian Life, by A N Wilson

It’s unmistakably a mission. As he sets out on his entrancing journey, A N Wilson willingly concedes that ‘Goethe is, surely, among all the truly great writers of this world, the least read in the English-speaking world.’ What are we all missing, in...

Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, by Diarmaid Macculloch

CHRISTOPHER HOWSE Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity By Diarmaid Macculloch Allen Lane £35 The cover of Sir Diarmaid Macculloch’s chatty ramble round 2,000 years of sex through Christian eyes shows the lower parts of Eve (by...

Marie Antoinette’s secret sex life – Antonia Fraser

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My Chequers history – Antonia Fraser on Clement Attlee