Previous convictions
The fetishisation of history
Last of the magicians
Every era views Isaac Newton through the prism of its own concerns. That's why we're obsessed with his alchemy
George at 100
The last job for Orwell biographers is to examine his faults and catalogue his enemies. But it only serves to confirm his virtues
The shadows of Suez
Suez cast a long shadow over Anthony Eden's political career. But the crisis left surprisingly little transatlantic or cross-channel rancour, says Philip Goodhart
Interviewing the interviewer
Janet Malcolm once wrote about the duplicitous relationship of journalists to their subjects. Elena Lappin talked to Malcolm, less about her Chekhov book than herself
Death by naturalism
How close can fiction come to describing reality? The British author BS Johnson embarked on a quest for absolute literary naturalism which ended in his suicide.
Lives of the mind
What explains the recent fashion for biographies of philosophers? Why do so few of them combine both good philosophy and vivid writing?
Hacking up the Victorians
Lytton Strachey bent the rules and even the facts. But he still defines the liberties a biographer can take with a life in service of the truth
Clara Schumann’s double life
Janice Galloway reclaims a life and the biographical novel
The definitive Dostoevsky
Joseph Frank has completed his five-volume biography of the Russian genius
Ancestor worship
Genealogy is now more popular than pornography. What does that say about us?
Levi’s inferno
As German Jews held to the culture of Goethe, so Primo Levi summoned Dante in Auschwitz. His struggle was with literature as well as testimony