Eric Ormsby
From Jesus Sect to Imperial Faith
Two new works by Geza Vermes and Peter Brown eloquently and enthusiastically chart the progress of Christianity from Jesus Christ to the height of the Byzantine empire
Clutching at Straws and Tilting at Minarets
Two new books on the origins of Islam suffer from, at best, sloppy, and at worst, dishonest, scholarship
A Wee Dram of History
Review of new poetry from Carol Ann Duffy, Derwent May, W.G. Sebald and Tomas Tranströmer
The Erotic Inferno
Book review of Dante in Love by A.N. Wilson
Underrated — Alfred Lord Tennyson
This Victorian versifier has always been an acquired taste, even to his contemporaries. But today, his prolific output is barely read at all — and we are poorer for it
Overrated — Paul Muldoon
Acclaimed poet Paul Muldoon may be a dazzling wordsmith, but his verse is all style and no substance
Rhyming Triplets
Book Reviews: New & Collected Poems, by U. A. Fanthorpe; How Snow Falls, by Craig Raine; and Late Poems, by Anthony Thwaite
Geoffrey Hill
The “unabashedly elitist” elegist of England is an ideal candidate for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry
The Poetical Mollusc
True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell under the Sign of Eliot and Pound by Christopher Ricks
Holier than Thou
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch and A New History of Early Christianity by Charles Freeman
Majority rule; minority rights
It is folly to treat UK race relations as totally divorced from the rest of human experience. We need to look at the larger global picture
American revolutions: Rewriting the language of the unheard
‘Dissenting viewpoints — for example, the belief that America is not an intrinsically racist country—are shunned as further proof of racist pathologies’
The favourites
From Piers Gaveston onwards, controversial courtiers have a long history in British politics.How unusual is Dominic Cummings?