Robert Low
Perils of paying off the pirates
Kidnapping remains a lucrative business. Anja Shortland’s new book examines how and where it thrives
Brexit bolters
Where are Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and George Osborne? It was as if they couldn’t wait to leave Parliament, having got what they could out of the system, with no thought of putting something back
Odds against life after the final whistle
Despite the demise of the doyen of British sportswriters, reports of the demise of sports journalism have surely been exaggerated — for now
The man who went off script
In her lively and readable biography, Adina Hoffman charts Ben Hecht’s progress from America’s most successful screenwriter to Jewish activist
Overrated: Ian Hislop
The editor of Private Eye, once Britain’s leading satirical magazine, is no dissenter but a key member of the establishment
The gentleman and the player
For many, Swanton and Arlott embodied the soul of cricket themselves
Exodus the world ignored
Lyn Julius’s Uprooted is an authoritative history of the decline and virtual end of Jewish life in the Arab world
Publish and be damned
Blake Morrison’s new novel on a literary executor’s tussle over a poet’s posthumous publication
End of the affair
Hilary Spurling’s biography of Anthony Powell contains a surprising revelation: that Powell’s wife had an affair during the Second World War
Not so fast, Nick
Nick Clegg’s new book How To Stop Brexit is shrill and bitter, and neglects to mention that his advocacy of the EU has been personally lucrative
Will the green agenda be killed off by the pandemic?
‘Will the green agenda be killed off by the longer-term coronavirus recovery? Or might the closure of so much business, and the cleaner air that results from planes not flying and factories not working, give us extra years to gain control of our environment?’
Why T.S. Eliot still matters
His contemporaries’ reputations have diminished. But Eliot’s has grown: he is the poet who shows us what can be saved from the ruins
Music’s in the house
Rappers have found a role in lockdown: chronicling coronavirus with topical tunes. Most people, though, are rushing to the safety of the past