Biography
Admirable in their awfulness – the siblings Gus and Gwen John
The self-styled Gypsy King and his reclusive sister seemed polar opposites – but both painters were selfish, obsessive monsters, according to Judith Mackrell
Nunc est bibendum – to Horace, the lusty rebel
Peter Stothard’s portrait of an ambitious young Lothario running wild and refusing to knuckle down is certainly not the Horace we know from Latin lessons
Everyone who was anyone in Russia was spied on – including Stalin
In 1972,Vasili Mitrokhin oversaw the transfer of thousands of documents in the KGB archives and secretly noted the atrocities they revealed - though Stalin’s file was mysteriously empty
What Mark Twain owed to Charles Dickens
It wasn’t just Dickens’s stage performances and publishing ventures that fascinated Twain, but the witty, journalistic style, which he mimicked to great effect in early travel books
Douglas Cooper – a complex character with a passion for Cubism
Prone to paranoia and tantrums, the critic and collector made many enemies, but his firsthand knowledge of Léger, Picasso and Braque also won the admiration of art historians
‘I secreted a venom which spurted out indiscriminately’ – Muriel Spark
Frances Wilson’s mesmerising biography of one of the past century’s most singular writers is especially enlightening on the ‘domestic savagery’ often required of a great artist
Thomas More’s courage is an inspiration for all time
His willingness to stand firm and speak truth to power is an important lesson for us all, says Joanne Paul – who draws many parallels between Henry VIII and today’s autocrats
The mystifying cult status of Gertrude Stein
The American author (of mostly unreadable books) was revered in 1920s Paris and became an international celebrity – though no one was quite sure why
The problem with Pascal’s wager
Graham Tomlin focuses on the Catholic philosopher’s search for intellectual certainty, but the cosmic gamble’s serious flaws don’t get the attention they deserve
Richard Ellmann: the man and his masks
James Joyce’s celebrated biographer seemed a mild man to fellow academics – but his ambition and steely self-belief made him a callous husband and father
Rafael Nadal: king of the orange brick court
No tennis player was so well suited to the centre court at Roland Garros, where the Spaniard won a record of 14 French Open titles
The love that conquered every barrier – including the Iron Curtain
Iain Pears tells the dramatic story of how two art historians – one English, one Russian – met by chance in Venice and found they couldn’t live without each other
The psychiatrist obsessed with ‘reprogramming’ minds
William Sargant’s controversial treatments of troubled young women in the 1960s included prolonged induced comas, ECT and, in extreme cases, lobotomies
William Blake still weaves his mystic spell
Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’
Across the universe – John and Paul are in each other’s songs forever
The Lennon-McCartney collaboration was one of genius from the start – and even in later years their songs continued to speak to one another, says Ian Leslie
How Anne Frank’s photograph became as recognisable as the Mona Lisa
To date, the diary, pieced together from Anne’s notebooks, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, with her story further explored in plays, films and novels
The adventures of the indomitable Dorothy Mills
The society rebel with a fondness for cross-dressing travelled widely in Africa, South America and the Middle East, dying in 1959, aged 70, with bags packed for the next expedition
The Bloomsbury Group’s precarious paradise
The latest biography of Vanessa Bell explores her domestic and artistic radicalism but avoids the central contradiction of her life: deceiving her daughter Angelica for years over her parentage
How can a biography of Woody Allen be so unbearably dull?
Only after 300-plus pages of tedious filmography do we finally get to the rift with Mia Farrow and the family scandals that have dogged Allen ever since
Why were the security services so obsessed with the Marxist historian Christopher Hill?
MI5 and Special Branch intercepted Hill’s mail for decades, but the former Master of Balliol was an impartial teacher and certainly no Soviet agent
The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell
Peter Conrad reminds us how the skilled stage performer, always yearning for enchantment, even introduced a few disguised magic tricks into his fiction
In search of Pico della Mirandola, the quintessential Renaissance Man
Though the scholar himself remains an enigma, his theories about language as a portal to the divine are explored in depth by Edward Wilson-Lee
The plain-speaking bloke from Warrington who painted only for himself
Born in 1932, Eric Tucker created his art not for exhibition or in pursuit of fame but simply because he felt compelled to do so
The secret of Gary Lineker’s success
The Leicester-born striker was neither exceptionally skilful nor assiduous; but he worked out how to score goals, and later excel in broadcasting, through intelligence and calm resilience
The splatter of green and yellow that caused uproar in the Victorian art world
A double biography of John Ruskin and James Whistler describes in detail the notorious feud between the prominent critic and the flamboyant post-Impressionist
