Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, is often labelled one of the worst monarchs in European history. His reign is billed by Tim Blanning’s publishers as ‘a study in failed statecraft, showing how a ruler can shape history as much by incompetence as brilliance’. Yet this thorough and often hilarious
Max Johnson’s life while he waited for a heart transplant had become so miserable and traumatic that he didn’t care whether he carried on or not. Indeed, the colourless, almost lifeless nine-year-old recorded a video saying he wanted to die. His parents felt as though they were on ‘death row’ as they waited for a
There is something undeniably sweet about this book. On one level, in line with the cover’s pretty pink text, it is a simple, unpretentious story about a girl who loved to dance. But on another level, the unfolding tragedy is Shakespearian – an effect amplified by the unfussy prose of Anne Allan, a long-time professional
Garth Greenwell has made a name for himself as a chronicler of touch. In his previous novels, What Belongs to You (2016) and Cleanness (2020), the intimacy of a lover’s hand or the frisson of something much darker – the spit, the slap of a BDSM session – could expand to fill whole paragraphs: stories
When Shakespeare wrote Richard II, he billed his play as a tragedy: the downfall of a king riddled with fear, contempt and an obscure sense of majesty. Shakespeare’s portrait was a reasonably accurate one. Some historians have suggested Richard was a narcissist; others that he had borderline personality disorder. Helen Castor offers a candid and
In Home Is Where We Start, Susanna Crossman quotes one of Nadine Gordimer’s characters on the subject of utopias: When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on Earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there’d be no end to what people would be made to
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point in which he explained how little things could suddenly add up to cause huge change, in phenomena as diverse as the popularity of Hush Puppies and the reduction of crime in New York City. The book achieved its own tipping point and
In April 1967 Tony Scotland, a cub reporter for Australia’s ABC television news, drove with a cameraman from Hobart to a sheep station in Fingal to interview Lord Talbot de Malahide, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who had edited a book about Tasmanian flora. This was a delicate assignment. Lord Talbot was a retired British ambassador to
I have been reviewing for decades and this is by far the most difficult book I have taken on: difficult to read because it relates to what Israel has done in Gaza over the last year, and difficult to write about because the subject is so divisive. But whether you think Palestinians deserve what is
