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The best history books of 2023: from Churchill to Henry III
A slate of superb 20th-century histories were matched by a couple of magnificent, long-anticipated conclusions to medieval series
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Has Nadine Dorries lost the plot? Her bizarre book blames Boris’s fall on ‘Dr No’ and ‘the Wolf’
The former Culture Secretary spends 350 pages hunting for a conspiracy in The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson
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The night Barbra Streisand stayed with the King: ‘He came into my bedroom looking for his dog’
In a weighty new memoir, the star reveals her long friendship with Charles – and that he once found her ‘devastatingly attractive’
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The bizarre footballing marriage of Elton John and Graham Taylor
John Preston’s new book Watford Forever, written with the flamboyant pop star’s help, offers a rollicking period tale of footballing success
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How Caster Semenya threw world athletics into gender chaos
‘I was born a girl... That’s the end of the argument,’ the Olympic runner writes in a new memoir explaining her clash with World Athletics
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Sex, disloyalty and murder attempts – George Harrison’s chaotic life
Philip Norman’s new biography of the late Beatle is a fleet and confident portrait of a complicated character
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The strange and violent history of the American flag
The story of the star-spangled banner is one of revolution, slavery and the first hydrogen bomb test
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How Britain tried to stop Communism – and failed
Anna Reid’s new history of the Russian Civil War is decently researched – but why does it paint Winston Churchill as a monster?
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Britney Spears’s memoir is the most sickening tale in modern pop
In The Woman in Me, the teen-pop princess accuses a litany of men of mistreating her, and a whole industry of profiting from her loss
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Why cancel culture in America isn’t as simple as you think
The Canceling of the American Mind, a survey by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, gets the basics right, but its own mind isn’t broad enough
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Proof that John le Carré was a repulsive person – but does it matter?
Adam Sisman’s catalogue of the novelist’s sins makes for an amusing read, but it will only satisfy those who prefer gossip to art
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Has any modern star had as shocking a life as Julia Fox?
The actress and model’s extraordinary memoir, Down the Drain, is a whirl of alleged abuse, drug deaths, sugar daddies – and Kanye West
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Inside the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire
Michael Lewis’s biography of the FTX chief offers a riveting story full of oddballs and odder decisions – but it ducks the biggest question
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Why Beyoncé and Taylor Swift owe Madonna everything
As Mary Gabriel’s biography shows, the Queen of Pop’s fearsome work ethic laid the ground for a generation of female artists
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Tim West, Pru Scales and the heartache of dementia
In his marital memoir, Pru and Me, West trots through their long careers with a string of jolly, if well-rehearsed, anecdotes
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France is on the brink – and this book shows why
Fixing France, a new book by Nabila Ramdani, slaps a US-centric worldview onto French woes, and junks republican ideals with unhappy haste
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How the British justice system allowed Nazi war criminals to live undetected
A new book examines how, despite various witness accounts and records, war criminals were able to hide in plain sight on these shores
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My chilling run-in with a secretive facial-recognition app
Clearview AI can identify people using just a snapshot, but when I began digging into the company things took a strange turn...
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Want to understand England’s history? Let David Mitchell explain it
The comedian’s trip through medieval history may pass at breakneck speed, but it’s an impressive blend of irreverence, accuracy and wit
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Beware, Fox News – you’re Michael Wolff’s real target
The biographer’s new book, The Fall, is notionally a Murdoch exposé, but forget Succession and gaze instead on America’s strangest network
