David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian who has made waves in his own sphere through his radical atavism (he refers often to the early Church fathers’ concept of the divine), his sympathy for and grasp of the languages and cultures of the ancient world and his unsqueamish, ferocious attacks on modern atheism. Perhaps more relevant to this readership... read more

For better or worse, Albert Hofmann has a lot to answer for. It was Hofmann, a chemist working for Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, who in 1943, in search of a respiratory and circulatory stimulant, inadvertently hit upon a substance called lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. Accidentally ingesting some of the substance... read more

In 2006 the football World Cup was held in Germany and, in line with common practice, accredited personnel – journalists included – received free travel passes, in this case, first-class on German railways. It was not just a perk: many of us were travelling from one game to another, one city to another, almost every day. Colleagues would meet up in those wonderfully... read more

Auguste Rodin ‘haunted’ (his word) the British Museum from the first of his many visits to London in 1881. He was aged forty-one, and already a lauded and successful sculptor, highly attuned to the power and beauty of ancient Greek art. This fine book is published to coincide with the exhibition ‘Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece’ at the British Museum, which has... read more

The temptation to write a biography of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as prime minister of Israel for twelve years and continues to be preferred by many Israelis over other possible candidates for the job, is great. Like Menachem Begin, the founding father of the Likud party and Israel’s first right-wing prime minister, Netanyahu arouses fierce... read more

What does it mean to be a prisoner in the land of the free? This is the question Rachel Kushner asks us to consider in her third novel, The Mars Room, a bleak and bitter interrogation of the socioeconomic structures, invisible but tyrannical, that regulate contemporary America. The belief that everyone born under the Stars and Stripes has the freedom to choose their own path underpins the American Dream. But through the story of Romy Hall... read more