Blame Chaucer

David Hughes thinks he's found the source of the modern media. He tracks down the guilty parties in The Hack's Tale

The name of the robes

Mick Brown's investigation of Tibetan Buddhism, The Dance of 17 Lives, reveals dark deeds and Machiavellian wranglings at the heart of an often idealised religion

Spender’s agenda

John Sutherland paints a portrait of man of sorrows in his biography of the 'addle-pated' poet, but Stephen Spender spent far too much time showing off, says Peter Conrad

Kicking off the bovver boots

Jo Brand left it until her 40s to marry, have children and start writing novels. And somehow she doesn't seem so mouthy any more. Sally Vincent meets her.

The worst wing

Bob Woodward's inside story of the run-up to war in Iraq, Plan of Attack, shows the US capital to be one of the most dysfunctional places on earth, says Jonathan Freedland

‘Me too’ memoirs

Kathryn Hughes learns a little too much about Josceline Dimbleby in her family memoir, A Profound Secret

Sugar and spice

Gretchen Gerzina's biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett shows how she placed her trust in fantasy and it paid off, says Natasha Walter

A talent for friendship

John Sutherland reveals Stephen Spender's true talents in his biography of a poet who was undervalued, not least by himself. Blake Morrison on his former PhD supervisor

Berlin echoes

Nicholas Lezard receives Joseph Roth's stark warning note from history, What I Saw - Reports from Berlin

Megaton megalomaniac

Despite pulling some punches, Peter Goodchild's new biography presents a compelling portrait of Edward Teller, the Darth Vader figure behind the H bomb

Raising the bar

Harry Mount tells how a chap can make a pig's ear out of a silk's purse in his memoir of his time as a trainee barrister, My Brief Career

Belle de nos jours

She warned us not to expect rocket science or fireworks, so why is the French intellectual elite so fired up about Catherine Deneuve's diaries, A l'ombre de moi-même?

Swerving Berlin

Henry Hardy's selection of Isaiah Berlin's early letters, Flourishing, brings alive the brilliant insights into people and places that made him such an influential figure in 20th-century politics and thought