Books
Duped by the Devil
Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West by Lawrence Rees
Box of Tricks
100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know by John D. Barrow
Raising the Tone
The Triumph of Music by Tim Blanning
Only One Thing on Their Minds
Sex and Sensuality in the Ancient World by Giulia Sissa
The Year of the Good Read?
2008 in review
Exotic Stew
The China Lover by Ian Buruma
Booby Prize
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Gray’s Elegy
Coda by Simon Gray
Crash Course
The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
Flying in the Face of Fashion
Chagall by Jackie Wullschlager
Majority rule; minority rights
It is folly to treat UK race relations as totally divorced from the rest of human experience. We need to look at the larger global picture
American revolutions: Rewriting the language of the unheard
‘Dissenting viewpoints — for example, the belief that America is not an intrinsically racist country—are shunned as further proof of racist pathologies’
The favourites
From Piers Gaveston onwards, controversial courtiers have a long history in British politics.How unusual is Dominic Cummings?