Cult leader
Jane Austen inspires vicious feuds among her hordes of admirers
Prospect Blog
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Tales of talent and cruelty
A biography of one of America’s greatest short-story writers eloquently depicts his battles with drink and depression, but fails to link that man to his art -
Imagine there’s no Stalin
Two new biographies help us to ask one of the great unanswered questions of the last century—what would have happened had Trotsky led the Soviet Union? -
A model modern Boswell
A new biography of Alasdair Gray doesn't answer the big questions. But it is canny and charming on the small ones -
Sympathy for the devil
Heidi Holland's biography of Robert Mugabe does something deeply unsettling—it makes me feel the dictator's pain -
A way in the world
In almost everything he writes, VS Naipaul hangs his arguments and prejudices from a seductive personal narrative that is jewelled with detail. His latest essay collection, about his early development as a writer, includes a beautiful account of his friendship with Anthony Powell -
Recycling Nixon
Conrad Black's weighty new biography of Richard Nixon portrays him as a "mighty and mythic" figure who made a "dignified exit" after being unfairly hounded from office—a code it's little trouble to break -
Hitler’s myth-maker
Leni Riefenstahl's apologists say she was a pure aesthete who cared nothing for politics. But it was her indifference to how her talents were used that made her so repugnant -
The self-made exile
Michael Foot was the great rhetorician of his age. His tirades against government enlivened politics and helped sustain the credibility of parliament -
Raine’s sterile thunder
TS Eliot's greatness as a poet is established beyond all doubt. So why do critics feel the need to defend him against all charges of misogyny and antisemitism?
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