David Herman
To whom does Kafka belong?
In telling the story of Kafka’s papers, Benjamin Balint’s new book explores a larger issue: who owns Kafka?
Low points of life with Father
This has been an extraordinary autumn for books about the havoc bad fathers wreak on their children. It is hard to know which father comes out worst: Jonathan Miller or Steve Jobs
Acerbic enemy of cowardice
The latest volume of Frederic Raphael’s diaries is a book full of bite and feline gossip
The boy in the ice-cream shop
Was Hans Asperger a benevolent and humane doctor? Or was he deeply implicated in Nazi psychiatry and its darkest episode, euthanasia?
Overrated: Ken Loach
The socialist filmmaker has usually been more popular with critics and film prize juries than with the public
Monument to a moment
Why is the BBC’s Civilisations such a mess?
Family saga in war and peace
The story of a family over two generations becomes embedded in the history of the 20th century in Mark Mazower’s What You Did Not Tell
Ignored no more
David Bomberg was one of the great British artists of the 20th century but was always an outsider and suffered neglect for much of his career
Thespian Agitprop
Why is British theatre about Israel so relentlessly one-note?
Shouted down
Honest analysis of Labour under Corbyn during the election was buried by mainstream news outlets
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts