Reviews

The great and not-so-great desert explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries are evocatively profiled.

While Montaigne: A Life by Philippe Desan review Montaigne might include debatable interpretations of his Essays, it is an essential study of the writer's life.

A compelling narrative on the machinations of a Borgia pope and his offspring, with the added spice of Machiavelli’s cool observations.

As Holocaust survivors die, new approaches are required to tell their history, as shown in this unsentimental, emphatic account of the inhabitants of a Berlin street.

The lives of six Victorian radicals shed light on the struggle to establish feminism, social reform and the Labour movement.

From a priory hospital in the fields, to the Huguenots, Jack the Ripper and the Kray twins, Spitalfields has always been considered a place apart

A detailed study of the Enlightenment and the Great Divergence displays admirable depth of knowledge and subtlety of argument.

The memoir of a pioneering woman pilot who delivered vital fighter aircraft and bombers around Britain during the war.

A painter and a critic discuss the visual past in a beguiling and provocative way, but do they engage the reader?