Books
Review: ‘The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States, and the Middle East 1979-2003’ by Steve Coll
Tyrants should only be brought down by their own people; they become martyrs when brought down by foreigners.
Bust?: Saving the Economy, Democracy and our Sanity by Robert Peston and Kishan Koria- Review
"So long as we have an economic system geared towards the accumulation of wealth rather than the acquisition of it, inequalities will continue to widen"
Book recommendations from the editors’ desk
"It’s rare that I find non-fiction to be such a page-turner, but Tara Westover’s autobiography was just that."
Greg Heffley: A Hero of Our Time
Few modern comic heroes align with our distinctive age – an age which Dickens’s...
The man of the moment: Review of Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin
"Baldwin does his best to humanise Starmer and to deflate the view of him as “Mr Boring”."
Society divided: Dickens and revolution
Ethan Croft considers the politics of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities
The life and death of the millennial author
Daniel Curtis considers the implications of social media for literary legacies
Dostoyevsky and the crime of orthodoxy
Daniel Villar reflects on how Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s religious beliefs influenced his literature as the anniversary of his death approaches on 9 February
Review: The Leopard
Altair Brandon-Salmon revisits the classic Italian 20th century novel
Harry Potter and the Procrastinators’ Tome
Izzy Smith is reminded of the comforting power of the books of our childhood
Author of the week: Halldór Laxness
Ellie Duncan takes a look at one of Iceland's greatest writers
Review: ‘White Trash’ by Nancy Isenberg
Daniel Villar finds this survey of white working class America wanting
Author of the week: Paul Beatty
A look at the winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize
Writing winter from Shakespeare to Selvon
Ellie Duncan surveys the representation of winter in literature through the ages
The richness of the materiality of books
Altair Brandon-Salmon discusses the importance of books as aesthetic objects
Vacation blues: what to read when you’re missing Oxford
Laura Hackett offers a fictional fix of Oxford nostalgia to see you through the vac
Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2016
James Lamming explores the relevance of George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' in the era of Trump
Five literary festive favourites
Izzy Smith picks out five of the best books to enjoy this Christmas
Were the Nazis on drugs?
The Nazi regime was permeated with drugs, from morphine to heroin, taken by almost everyone in the Reich, from soldiers to housewives. This shocking...