Books

Kierkegaard’s spirit has never been laid to rest. He is the philosopher of angst and dread: the conscience-stricken companion of modern consciousness

The radical Jewdas Haggadah provides a rag-week version of the Passover ceremony for pubescent Marxists

André and Simone Weil were two sides of the same coin: impatient; determined; brilliant; attracted to ancient wisdom and ideas

There are shades of Philby in Richard Sorge, the hard-drinking, motorcycling, womanising rake whose cover as an arrogant Nazi convinced the German official community in Tokyo that he was one of them

John Buchan’s labours not only served the public good: they provided the raw material and characters for his thrillers

David Laws demolishes a conspiracy theory about the death of Lord Kitchener and does it very classily indeed

Communist dictators often feel compelled to prove that they are not merely great revolutionaries, but also great and original thinkers. In reality all are variants of the same system

McEwan and the machine

John Fuller’s ninth novel is rich in comic phrase-making, with the kinetic subtlety of his finest poems