Emmanuel Macron, it seems, is a leader of France who has great personal charm and determination – enough charm, indeed, judged by their recent meeting, to delight even that most lumpen of creatures, ...

Regina Porter’s remarkable debut novel leads us on a journey through America’s mottled history, beginning in the aftermath of the Second World War and ending in the early years of Barack Obama’s ...

No matter how hard doctors try to measure it, pain is a subjective experience. None of us really knows what someone means when they say they’re in pain, given that what is agony for one person might ...

The Scottish crime writer Val McDermid is a fan of forensic scientists. She points out that they ‘are willing to engage with the darkest and most frightening aspect of human behaviour on a daily basis ...

'What do you believe?' For most of us the question is embarrassing. Even the minority who subscribe to a particular faith, or denomination within one, find it difficult to distinguish between what ...

Some novels are hard to review, some are easy. Some are so difficult you don’t know where to begin…but, then, a gift: the author saves you the trouble by more or less reviewing the book for you. So ...

Who would write, let alone read, a weighty history (literally so: my elderly mother complained she couldn’t lift it), published in a luxury edition priced at £35, of the parish hall or Women’s ...

F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are two of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. Among the remarkable things about them are the peculiar similarities and parallels of their ...

On an autumn day in 1680, the 50-year-old Charles II charged Samuel Pepys with an unusual task. Over two three-hour sittings, one on a Sunday evening, the next the following Tuesday morning, the king ...

The late Mal Peet was a writer of extraordinary gifts. His work was varied, intelligent and challenging, and he strained at convention while telling powerful and moving stories. His estate has been ...

Sir John Lubbock was an exemplary Edwardian Liberal. Growing up under the influence of Charles Darwin, who lived in the same village as him, he had a scientific mind. A truly good man and a ...

In just thirteen years, George Villiers rose from plain squire to become the only duke in England and the most powerful politician in the land. Does a new biography finally unravel the secrets of his ...