Books

Western scholarship on Islam has long been under a cloud

For many, Swanton and Arlott embodied the soul of cricket themselves

Far more than just a jolly trip down memory lane, with a backdrop of dreaming spires, this is a moving and mature work

The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars is a wonderful, strange, genre-defying book

Ibn Khaldun has been repackaged to serve contemporary concerns many times, but Robert Irwin’s biography cuts through the myth-making

Lyn Julius’s Uprooted is an authoritative history of the decline and virtual end of Jewish life in the Arab world

The helter-skelter expansion of higher education may be good for individuals but has sharpened value divides in society

Andrew Gimson’s portraits of our 54 prime ministers are lucid, pithy and perceptive

Tibor Fischer’s new novel How To Rule The World is a bleakly brilliant picaresque

Jordan Peterson is erudite and well read but 12 Rules for Life has much of the tenor of a typical self-help book