Let’s keep this simple. If you think inviting an author of sexually explicit material that also has a sprinkling of blasphemy to a Catholic school is a good idea, then do not become a governor at that school and do not teach there. If you are a parent who has a child there I suggest
Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City by Matthew Teller Profile Books, £13.35, 389 pages If this book were a painting, it would have been done in bold strokes and vibrant colours. It evokes the sights, smells and flavours of “Old” Jerusalem effectively, as Matthew Teller integrates the geography of the
Bad Relations by Cressida Connolly Viking, £14.99, 288 pages Families don’t always bring out the best in people,” says one of the characters towards the end of Cressida Connolly’s novel Bad Relations. Despite its title, this gem is about much more than familial discord through the generations; its themes are memory, loss, grief and redemption.
Architectural Drawings: Hidden Masterpieces from Sir John Soane’s Museum by Dr Frances Sands Batsford Press, £35, 159 pages “We’ll make heaven a place on earth,” crooned the songstress Belinda Carlisle. I wonder whether she’s ever visited the Sir John Soane Museum, in the heart of London, where, for people like me, that process has already
A Life of Picasso, Volume IV: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943 by John Richardson Jonathan Cape, £35, 368 pages John Richardson died in 2019 with his monumental biography of Picasso half-finished, leaving its subject with 30 years of life still to come. This uncompleted project will surely be the Ozymandias of all biographies, since Richardson’s talents were
A People’s Church: A History of the Church of England by Jeremy Morris Profile Books, £30, 480 pages The defining and unhappy image of the response of the Church of England to the Covid-19 pandemic was that of the Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating Holy Communion on his kitchen table at Lambeth Palace. It was Easter
Thirty years is a long shelf life for any historical work, and perhaps especially so for a historical work self-consciously designed as a challenge to received opinion. For all its bulk, The Stripping of the Altars is a polemic, written to contest the account of the English Reformation canonised in a long interpretative tradition that
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