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
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