Evelyn Waugh

Nothing in the Wikileaks saga has been more typically American than the search for a good-news angle on the whole depressing story. Merely keeping a stiff upper lip is not enough, it seems. We need to assure ourselves that what looks like a disaster is really a victory. READ MORE >>

Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England By Anthony Julius (Oxford University Press, 811 pp., $45) I. READ MORE >>

“But I think we can take it there won’t be any air raids, not on London at any rate,” Sir Joseph Mainwaring says confidently on the day the Second World War, and Put Out More Flags, both begin. “The Germans will never attempt the Maginot line. The French will hold on for ever, if needs be ...” For the rest of Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Sir Joseph's taste for of lofty predictions—“But there is one thing of which I am certain. Russia will come in against us before the end of the year. That will put Italy and Japan on our side”—becomes a running gag. READ MORE >>

Maurice Bowra: A Life By Leslie Mitchell (Oxford University Press, 385 pp., $50) READ MORE >>

The Life of Kingsley AmisBy Zachary Leader (Pantheon Books, 996 pp., $39.95) READ MORE >>

Last month, a little-known British historian named Andrew Robert swas swept into the White House for a three-hour-long hug. He lunched with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, huddled alone with the president in the Oval Office, and was rapturously lauded by him as"great." Roberts was so fawned over that his wife, Susan Gilchrist,told the London Observer, "I thought I had a crush on him, but it's nothing like the crush President Bush has on him." READ MORE >>

The New Republic

The Square and the Flair

The Knowns and the Unknowns

Our Troops Abroad: What Does a Soldier Need to Read?

America's Facile, Self-Congratulatory Response to Wikileaks

The Living Lie

The Living Lie

In Which Football Is Thankfully Unlike Finance

Unquiet Flows the Don

Drink and the Old Devil

White Man for the Job

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