Distant voices, still lives

Was the British Empire 'the most thundering contribution these isles ever made to history', or simply something best forgotten? A new museum offers some help

A notional treasure

The latest instalment of Bevis Hillier's life of John Betjeman confirms its status as a classic in the making

Keep left

The latest instalment of Tony Benn's diaries, Free At Last!, charts the final phase of his journey to the left. Paul Foot salutes his integrity

Philosophy and other perversions

Ian Pindar on the conflicts of Georges Bataille revealed in Michel Surya's biography of the serial womaniser and political theorist

Camilla at Versailles

Frances Wilson enjoys Lisa Hilton's life of Louis XIV's mistress, Athénais - The Real Queen of France

The divine right to abuse other species

Nicols Fox discovers man's Bible-inspired belief in dominion over animals has been perverted to support the widespread torture of creatures for science, agriculture and sport in Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully.

The joys of do-it-yourself astronomy

Marcia Bartusiak's love affair with the heavens is reawakened by Seeing In The Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril by Timothy Ferris.

Look around you

What did Christopher Wren do when he wasn't building 52 churches and a cathedral? Lisa Jardine looks for the personal behind the monumental in On a Grander Scale

Mirror, mirror

Roy Greenslade enjoys Dogs and Lampposts, Richard Stott's memoir of his time as a Maxwell editor

The trouble with plaster

Michael McNay chisels away at Ross King's biography of the man who painted the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

A good thing

Alexander Chancellor salutes the achievements of Max Hastings and his headmasterly memoirs, Editor

The ghost writer

Ann Saddlemyer leaves nothing out in her biography of Mrs WB Yeats, Becoming George. Brenda Maddox on a one-sided marriage

Point of no return

Malu Halasa on how the experience of exile, both at home and abroad, has brought an unusual directness to Palestinian memoirs from Ghada Karmi and Raja Shehadeh