No one should be compelled to join an all-singing, all-dancing celebration of multi-ethnic Britain

Tory diehards 100 years ago exhibited the same kind of passion against Home Rule as they did against Maastricht

Rebecca West had a savage pen and a stormy life. Frank Kermode, who judged the first Booker prize with her, finds her letters full of candour, sadness and snobbery

Philip Roth is one of the great writers of our time. At his best he mixes great rage with great craft, says Judith Flanders. So why has he written another disappointing novel?

Is there a conspiracy to prevent the public from learning how to look at paintings?

Javier Marias speaks for a confident modern Spain with its calculated suppression of recent history

The Herzog-Kinski partnership was what Nietzsche called a "star friendship"

Mozart's irony and moral relativism make him a composer for our time

Despite all the doom-laden books about rape, murder and torture, a hopeful black South African culture is emerging

The cultural and aesthetic challenges of putting Russia's national poem on the big screen