At first sight, Swede Levov is an unlikely protagonist for Philip Roth’s new novel. Ever since Alexander Portnoy’s celebrated complaint of 1969 ‘put the id back into yid’, Roth has specialised in ...

Even in his own lifetime, King Henry VIII became notorious throughout Europe for his serial marriages. When Henry was combing the Continent for a woman willing to become his fourth wife, English ...

Drudge Culture - Small Holdings by Nicola Barker ...

There is a story about René Descartes according to which the philosopher once owned a female automaton so convincing that a superstitious mariner, seeing the machine in operation, declared it the work ...

Richard V Reeves: Why Some Are More Equal Than Others - Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea by Darrin M McMahon ...

Few novels by a writer previously unknown to me have excited me as much as Richard Zimler’s international bestseller The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon. Set in Portugal at the close of the fifteenth century ...

D J Taylor: Fiction, Feminism & Fake Vicars - A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Books, Writers and Virago by Lennie Goodings ...

One of the most important facts about Michel Houellebecq – usually overlooked in favour of his nihilism, alleged racism and other attention-seeking provocations – is that he is a first-rate prose ...

Sequences of novels that follow characters through a long period of time are popular with writers and readers because they allow fiction to represent the experience of living. In Anthony Powell’s ...

David Gelber: Heroic Work in a Very Important Field - Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times by Phillipa K Chong ...

Stephen Greenblatt’s ardent and involving new book is concerned with rulers and aspirants in Shakespeare who abuse their power. It draws attention to a very wide range of characters. There are the out ...

‘Do as I say, not as I do’ applies to philosophy as much as any other discipline. The search for the Good Life (what the Ancient Greeks termed eudaimonia) does not presuppose a good life, or a ...