Identifiable courage

Ewen MacAskill finds a rare exception to the rules of foreign reporting in John Simpson's The Wars Against Saddam

Winged wonders

In Audubon's Elephant, Duff Hart-Davis recounts the troubled birth of Birds of America, the most beautiful book ever printed. James Buchan feels the width

Predictably unpredictable

The quirks of Martin Bell's memoir, Through Gates of Fire, do not detract from his moral authority, says Ed Vulliamy

500 years on, tiny comic strips go on display

Exhibition to show 15th-century masterpieces made to order.

Putting grammar on the radar

Grammar back in fashion? It never went out, says Luke Meddings. But which is the best model for teaching it today?

In a noble cause

Martin Kettle reviews presidential biographies by Robert Dallek and Nigel Hamilton and says that, to our shame, condescension still defines British attitudes towards even the best of America's leaders

Cold warrior

Ian Gilmour enjoys John Campbell's second instalment of a vast but fair assessment of Margaret Thatcher

Forever Fifties

Stefan Kanfer shows how Lucille Ball was trapped by one TV show in his biography of the 50s icon, Ball of Fire

Museum aims to draw crowds with cartoon boy wonder aged 75

Tintin to star in exhibition sponsored by lifelong devotee.

The dead poet’s tale

Whodunnit? Jonathan Myerson is rapt in a Python's coils of explanation as to the writer's mysterious end in Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones et al

An insult to the brain

Was Dylan Thomas a hero or an over-rated alcoholic? On the 50th anniversary of the poet's death, Nicholas Wroe looks at a new biography by Andrew Lycett and two collections of writings, edited by Gilbert Bennett and David N Thomas