The Templars were the principal crusading order of the Middle Ages. They were the chief pillar of the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem before its final collapse in 1291. They played a heroic role in the defence of its last redoubt, at Acre. Their courage was legendary. Their casualties were high, even by the standards of Middle Eastern warfare: six of the twenty-three grand masters ... read more

Who is the most popular politician in the world? Probably the foul-mouthed, gun-toting septuagenarian president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. His most recent approval rating was 88 per cent, rising to 91 per cent among the poorest Filipinos. How does he do it? By indiscriminately rubbing out supposed bad guys – and if some of them do actually turn out to be criminals, so much the better. Insulting all and sundry ... read more

Marianne Power attempted to follow one self-help book per month for a year. I actively avoid them. I felt a particular grinding horror when at the end of a yoga practice (yes, it’s called a practice), my instructor went to a bag, pulled out a book and started reading to us about ‘the law of attraction’ and ‘sending positive vibrations into the universe’. Prone on the deck... read more

Thomas Cromwell has lately been enjoying a renaissance. Prior to 2009, if people had heard of him at all, they most likely thought of the brutish and cynical fixer in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons (memorably portrayed by Leo McKern in the 1966 film version). Or they might have remembered something from A-level history about an important, if rather grey figure in Tudor governmental... read more

Entertaining, well researched, intelligent and easy to read, this book, as the author explains, is about the private lives of royalty from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, and about how the business of looking after royalty has changed and yet in some respects remained the same over the past five centuries. In the 21st century the size of Elizabeth’s... read more

‘In my beginning is my end’, says Eliot in Four Quartets, and (to cut a long story short) vice versa. Those of a poetical bent might choose to see this cyclical structure reflected in the Cyclopean glass eye of the communal washing machine in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s apartment building, into which he must regularly shovel a hecatomb of soiled children’s clothing... read more