Do you know what happened in Lyon in AD 177? Or in Milan in 1300? Or in Baroda in 1825? You probably don’t, but you shouldn’t worry: few do. Whatever happened, it was, by ordinary standards, something ...

It is a telling irony that a historical novel could be the quintessential literary work of the post-truth era. Perhaps no other novel better captures the malleability of truth than The Mirror and the ...

The existence of Fashion depends on people buying more clothes than they wear out. If a garment is replaced only when it is worn out there is no Fashion, if it is worn beyond its natural replacement ...

This proved a difficult book to read: put down for a moment it was appropriated by someone else and thereafter continued to journey furtively about the house, pursued by frustrated readers. Treat it ...

Beginnings is a truly remarkable work of criticism which, for some reason, has had far less than its due share of attention since appearing in 1975. Reviewers were probably bewildered, not only by the ...

Like any landscape after a flood, everything looks different since the advent of the #MeToo movement. Contours have shifted, new lines have been drawn. Of course, changes were afoot long before Harvey ...

A FEW YEARS ago, I mentioned to a London Jewish friend that I was writing an article about the Irish diaspora. ‘Diaspora?’ he shouted. ‘We’re the ones with the diaspora. Is there nothing the bloody ...

Herculaneum, a town on the Bay of Naples that was buried beneath volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, has only been partially excavated. Some buildings stand open to the sky; others, such as ...

As India powers its way up the world GDP rankings, a case is being made for recasting its national history as ‘world history’. By looking beyond India’s boundaries and focusing on the global context ...

Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No Sorcerer - Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey Thomas W Hodgkinson - There Was No Sorcerer Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No ...

The political thriller has been perhaps the most successful fictional genre of the past decade, as Frederick Forsyth’s bank manager would doubtless testify. Yet very few politicians have tried their ...

From her second novel, What Are You Like? (2000), about twin girls separated at birth in Dublin, up to 2007’s Booker-winning The Gathering, in which historical sexual abuse within an Irish family ...