Strategically located in the narrows of the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tripoli, with a fine natural harbour, Malta has attracted the attention of successive conquerors for two millennia: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, French and finally British. In 1565, the island was occupied by a power that was already beginning to look anachronistic:
In his closing pages, Chris Evans delivers his verdict on his subject: That’s what Gary Lineker is: human. As his story shows, it’s possible to accomplish seemingly impossible things while staying grounded and true to your roots. I hate to be cruel about a diligently researched book by a freelance journalist. But unthinking writing cannot
What does it take to bury an outdated argument? The thought occurred while reading Motherland, one of a series of recent books seemingly haunted by the ghost of Hugh Trevor-Roper. Back in 1964, Trevor-Roper, an expert on the English Civil War and the Third Reich, made the mistake of opining on African history. There was
It is rare to read a book about Cicero that likens its hero to a demagogue. Rome’s prosecutor of conspiracy and corruption in the last years of the Republic is seen more commonly as a toga-draped crusader for virtue. Was he also a ranter steeped in violence, crude character-assassination, tendentious storytelling and racial stereotypes? Yes,
London, June 1877. Beneath a cloudy sky, the celebrated art critic John Ruskin strode along Bond Street towards the newly opened Grosvenor Gallery. Inside, he viewed a smash-hit show of beautiful and progressive art. At least that was the popular opinion. With a few exceptions, Ruskin dismissed the works on display as eccentric, impertinent and
Whenever a new study of the Nazi regime appears, it is taken as a given that after Adolf Hitler seized power and became dictator of Germany in 1933 an egalitarian society emerged, very different to previous decadent, backward-looking generations. In this modern era, it is assumed, the concerns of the Kaiser and the German elite
My cat can smell depression. Another family cat could smell my stepfather’s dementia. They both became more affectionate and tactile: the dementia-smelling cat would gently paw my stepfather, when he hadn’t even liked her when he had been well. My cat comes in close when my mood is darker. Perhaps both cats were using other
Winston Churchill hoped and expected his autobiography, My Early Life, to be read as much as literature as history, and also as an adventure story. He dedicated it ‘To a New Generation’, and it was especially intended to inspire people in their early twenties. ‘Twenty to 25, those are the years,’ he wrote. ‘Don’t be
Maeve Brennan (1917-93) was a supremely gifted Irish/American writer, whose work is periodically rediscovered, only to vanish again. It’s as if her literary reputation (she has been compared with Joyce, Flaubert and Chekhov among others) won’t stay fixed and is as homeless as she herself became. Arriving home to Dublin, Anastasia expects a warm welcome
When José Saramago denounced the Bible as a ‘catalogue of cruelties’ at the launch of his novel Cain in 2009, the response from the Catholic church in Portugal was fast and frosty. The country’s conference of bishops labelled his comments ‘offensive’, adding: ‘Insults do no one any good, particularly from a Nobel prizewinner.’ Saramago might
