Some of the greatest literature of the Soviet era is only now becoming available in fine English translations. Sally Laird finds similar themes reverberating in new Russian writing

Walt Disney has turned "Beauty and the Beast" into a parable about socialising masculinity without lessening its appeal. But Celia Brayfield thinks Superman and Lois Lane are unlikely to live happily...

Muriel Spark has been writing superior fiction for 40 years. Malcolm Bradbury pays tribute and says her latest novel shows she has not lost her touch

Uwe Timm's deceptively light narrative is a mixture of Kazuo Ishiguro, Graham Swift, Woody Allen and James Joyce. He has saved German letters and written the reunification novel

The essential literature on the last great landslide

The wrongs of the past came from the absence of freedom, the wrongs of the present from its excesses. Robert Cooper is impressed by Geoff Mulgan's new book, but finds his answers less convincing than...

Charles Elton finds Mia Farrow's memoir follows the classic three-act structure of any Hollywood princess: dysfunctional family, bewildering marriages, messy splits

George Grosz was inspired by William Hogarth but Grosz gets better treatment from the Royal Academy than Hogarth gets from the Tate, says Norbert Lynton

The memoirs of former Conservative party treasurer, Alistair McAlpine, reveal a politically shallow egotist. Bruce Anderson says he contributed far less to Thatcherism than he imagines

New research on the origins of the cold war is confirming the realist view that the Soviets were responsible for the conflict. Philip Gordon is impressed, but the revisionists have not had their last...