4th August 2021

Craxton, that wonderful painter and funny, lovely man, could be in no better hands than those of Ian Collins, a writer and curator of distinction, a close friend of Craxton's for the last decade of his life and now involved with the Craxton Estate. This glorious ...

26th July 2021

James Marriott and his co-author Terry Macalister have spent decades researching and writing about the oil industry. Their new book explores the history and social consequences of the UK's oil business, its shifting relationship with government ...

26th July 2021

From the former head of the National Gallery, NPG and Royal Academy, an architecturally inclined assessment of how we display art.

11th June 2021

OL talks to Magnus Rena about her new book, Everybody: A Book about Freedom. It’s a sweeping, collective biography of a dozen glamorous but stifled figures: Susan Sontag, Christopher Isherwood, Nina Simone, Wilhelm Reich, Malcom X, Ana Mendieta ...

1st June 2021

The horsemen of the title are those of the Apocalypse, the terrifying outriders of war, pestilence, famine and death. Dr Mayhew considers developments in several fields to argue that we are pushing back successfully these dreadful tides. It’s a gripping, lively narrative ...

6th May 2021

Helena's citrusy history of Italy, The Land Where Lemons Grow, sold by the armful when it came out in 2014. Her new book tells the story of one fragile instrument and its journey across Europe, from Wales to Cremona to Russia.

6th May 2021

In European medieval cities, literacy rates among adult males was only 25%, dwindling to 1% in villages. At the same time in Florence it was 70%. So what made this city the literary hub of Renaissance Europe? After his bestselling Brunelleschi's Dome, Ross King ...

20th April 2021

Not so much a sequel to The Hare with Amber Eyes this short, superb and immensely powerful book is nevertheless complementary to his earlier book. Read it, give it, think about it; read it again.

14th April 2021

Roland Philipps' new book, Victoire, is a gripping story of espionage, seduction and double-crossing. It follows Mathilde Carré, a spy in the intelligence networks of Occupied France. To discuss the book, Roland is joined by Daniel Lee, author of The SS Officer's ...

6th March 2021

Horatio Clare is a supremely articulate and intelligent writer, known to us most recently for his magical retracing of Bach's journey across northern Germany in Something of His Art and for his remarkable Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal. Ironically, as we read these in ...