The empress Eugénie – the Spanish-born last empress-consort of France, wife of Napoleon III, mother of the prince imperial –…

There are a few pop stars whose work I can’t help liking in spite of myself – their song-writing, that…

Apart from when the government has been self-immolating, the royal family has dominated the news recently: the passing of Queen…

In June 2017 Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, was surprised when Jane Sarkin, his features editor, told him…

The American poet Robert Lowell (1917-77) was a so-called ‘Boston Brahmin’, a Lowell of Boston, where, in the widely known…

Despite its many centuries of popularity – enthusiasts have ranged from Cleopatra to Eric Clapton – angling has been the…

Brawling, boozing and womanising, those vaunted hell-raisers of the 1960s – Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and, of course,…

In Keep Talking, David Dimbleby takes us through a gentle romp of a stellar, unrivalled broadcasting career spanning, incredibly, 70…

Stefan Hertmans is dismayed to discover that his home was once owned by a Flemish collaborator with the SS

But does Matthew Hollis understand the poem as well he understands the manual action of a Corona?

Putin’s new army looked lean and mean, but old, inherent weaknesses persisted: over-rigid commanders, demoralised soldiers and shaky logistics

There are wolves, bats, 101 dogs and Maggie O’Farrell’s Nouka – an adorable black ball of fluff with big green eyes

Her attack on the council’s record under Conservative leadership betrays her failure to grasp the fundamentals of local government finance

Tony Tetro fooled many connoisseurs with his canvases – aged by mixing coffee and cigarette butts or baking them in a pizza oven

Hazzard’s spiritual awakening on reading Leopardi’s poems and first seeing the Bay of Naples led to a lifelong passion for her adopted country

Oliver Smith takes us on a tour of train graveyards, bunkers, ghost towns, crumbling palaces – and a 7,000-bedroom hotel in North Korea that never even opened

A teenage maid goes missing after a party of men arrive at a lonely alpine hotel for a sinister carnival feast

Mark Urban describes the remarkable feats of the parachute regiment created under Churchill’s orders in June 1940 to rival the Fallschirmjäger

Other artists include James Gillray, Quentin Blake, Lucian Freud – and those inspired over the centuries by an overlooked subject in art history: the egg

Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, Gardner’s novel tells the story of young Neva, whose ability to predict the weather nearly ruins her

The New York socialite devoted much of his time to saving wild life in Kenya – though a new biography ignores some of his less reputable views