Mick Herron’s Slough House spy thrillers are, by now, one of the least well-kept secrets in espionage fiction. Everyone with even half an eye on the genre knows he’s somewhere near the top. He is ...

The production and export of cars, machinery and chemicals lay behind the German ‘economic miracle’ of the 20th century. Yet the German economy is now struggling. @HowardJDavies considers who is to ...

I’m an avid reader of Donleavy's novels of the sexual picaresque, though I suppose that, as a femininist, I should be ashamed of myself. A new one, Schultz, and the re-issue of The Onion Eaters (1971) ...

Spinoza, according to Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, is ‘the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers’. As a natural consequence of his ethical supremacy, Russell adds, ...

The Munich crisis in 1938 triggered air-raid precautions, including the distribution of gas masks and sandbags. Actual war in ...

Kaput is about the problems facing Germany rather than the successes of the UK. Münchau (the clue is in the umlaut) is very ...

The Story of Handel’s Messiah by Charles King ...

Using black-and-white photographs printed directly onto the page, Hornby found a playful, metatextual way to illustrate his ...

When Franz Kafka died on 3 June 1924, he had published just a few collections of short prose, none of them to much acclaim. The majority of the writing for which he is now known and celebrated, such ...

Until I read Hermione Lee’s life of Tom Stoppard, I didn’t know it was possible to bask in envy. As if being handsome, funny and a dazzling writer (and good at cricket and fly-fishing) weren’t enough, ...

The Mask of Apollo (1966), one of Mary Renault’s less memorable historical novels, is set in ancient Athens and Syracuse and has at its centre the performance of Greek tragedy. Glorious Exploits, ...

‘Talk to anyone who has read Thom Gunn’, Michael Nott writes in the introduction to this book, ‘and one of the first things they’ll mention is that his poems speak to them on a personal level.’ Nott ...