David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian who has made waves in his own sphere through his radical atavism (he refers often to the early Church fathers’ concept of the divine), his sympathy ...

This is the story of two crimes. The first was the bombing by the IRA of two pubs in Guildford in October 1974. Five people were killed, and many others horribly injured. The indiscriminate slaughter ...

The launch of The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale, was one of the most anticipated publishing events of the 21st century. When Amazon dispatched pre-ordered editions ...

A C Grayling has carved out a niche not only as a lucid and accessible interpreter of philosophy for the general reader but also as a passionate advocate for the role that it can and should play in ...

I drive to Wiltshire on a rare sunny English summer’s day to interview V S Naipaul in his country home. All his books, fiction and non-fiction, are to be reissued (by Picador in Britain and Knopf in ...

All but a few crumbs of the available archive materials have been studied, every political and psychological theory has been applied, filters of every colour – whitewash, deepest red, pitch black – ...

This large book is both rewarding and demanding. It offers information in abundance and, like Sir Barry Cunliffe’s previous publications from OUP, it is beautifully written and illustrated. But what ...

In this difficult-to-classify book, Ian Sansom – best known for his mystery novels, which I’ve read and enjoyed – rambles through (or beside) one of the great modern poems: ‘September 1, 1939’ by W H ...

In his Commencement Address at Amherst in 1993, John Updike told the students that they were graduating at a time when history was more like a short-story collection than a novel. The Cold War that he ...

Heidi Blake is a former assistant editor at the Sunday Times who now works for BuzzFeed. Her book does two things, one badly, the other well. On the positive side, Blake has written a pacy, fact-based ...

Nothing is more irritating for novelists than the expectation of the public that they will remain true to previous form in every way. Publishers in particular are keen on consistency. There is always ...

‘Florella Burney Born June the 19: 1,758: in the Parish off St Anna SoHo. Not Baptiz’d, pray Let porticulare care be take’en off this child, As it will be call’d for Again.’ The love felt by desperate ...