The magnificent Mr Welles

Alan Warner enjoys Simon Callow's Orson Welles: Hello Americans, the second instalment of a glittering career.

The outraged aesthete

Timothy Mowl's biography of William Kent charts how the architect and designer fused the Palladian and the baroque to astonishing effect, says Alan Hollinghurst.

Till death us do part

We're all doomed in the end - so when a character in a horror movie is sent brutally to their grave, it should be a great source of comfort to us, says Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk.

The lessons the West won’t learn

Jason Burke argues that our flawed response to 9/11 has emboldened our enemies in his penetrating survey of the Islamic world, On the Road to Kandahar, says Jon Snow.

Behind the shroud

Michael Baigent piles speculation on conspiracy theory in The Jesus Papers, says Jonathan Bouquet.

The real deal

Joanna Briscoe is snared by Kate Holden's glittering story of addiction and prostitution, In My Skin.

Stage-boor Johnny

John Heilpern's biography of John Osborne, A Patriot for Us, is a fitting tribute to an angry old man, says Blake Morrison.

Hooked on murder

David Seabrook's evocative account of a serial killer preying on prostitutes in the London of Ruth Ellis and the Krays, Jack of Jumps, is marred by his hostility to the victims, says David Jays.

Zimbabwe in black and white

Christina Lamb tells the true story of a white farmer and his black servant before and after Mugabe in her illuminating and flawed House of Stone, says Jason Cowley.

Osborne out of focus

John Heilpern avoids the sin of blandness in his authorised biography of John Osborne, A Patriot for Us. A pity he commits so many others, says Adam Mars-Jones.

Bob, the Floyd, Syd and me

Joe Boyd gives a scintillating account of Sixties rock in his exceptional memoir, White Bicycles, says Mark Ellen.

A beautiful loser makes good

Kate Holden's humanity shines out from her memoir of her time as a prostitute, In My Skin, says Stephanie Merritt.