Nicola Shulman salutes the memoirs of an old-school editor and socialite; Rebecca Fraser discusses an unexpectedly peaceful transition of power in seventeenth-century America Toby Lichtig travels to ...

In an essay of 1946, George Orwell reminded readers that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle”. In their complementary new books on the shadow global economy, the ...

Does the term “South Sea Annuity” ring a bell? There is no reason why it should. It is a recondite feature of eighteenth-century government finances, when Britain, engaged in the “Second Hundred Years ...

What a peculiar book this is. Peter York, best known for his cod-anthropological examin­ation of British society’s various snobby tribes, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982), has turned his ...

Most of us would rather not think about death – our own or that of others. It is one of the most invisible, suppressed, negated and denied facts of life. Yet it will eventually and inevitably catch up ...

Does it matter who wrote the books we love? I was recently asked to talk about Elsa Morante (1912–85) at the Italian Cultural Institute in London. The idea was to present her fiction in a celebration ...