A sad tale to tell
Sometimes writers have to get a memoir out of their system before they can start on their great novel. Will…
Poison pen letters
Richard Bradford has written more than 20 books of literary criticism and biography. This latest one is a compendium of…
Bare-faced lies
Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes…
The wisdom of clouds
Children can teach each other, believes Sugata Mitra — if you give them the internet, a big screen and a helpful granny on Skype
The stain of luxury
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen did a good job of showing how foolish it is to be obsessed by…
Always keep a-hold of Nurse…
Soon after moving to London at the age of 20, Nina Stibbe wrote to her sister Vic saying, ‘Being a…
Funny, warm and eccentric
It must have been awful for Diana and Duff Cooper to be separated from their only child during the war,…
A fascist’s fireside chat
This book may sound like it’s going to be about high fashion, but it’s actually about Nazism, satanism, incest and…
