Lady Elizabeth Longford

The 'aesthetes' moll' who stood for parliament and became a prolific biographer and historian in her own right.

Give ’em enough dope…

Barry Miles's diaries, In the Sixties, has got the lot: Paul and Jane, Mick and Marianne, Leary... and 50ft spliffs

The only man for the job

James Callaghan on John Grigg's biography of Britain's other great wartime prime minister, Lloyd George

Out of the shadows

Veronica Horwell on Gillian Tindall's life of the elusive artist Wenceslaus Hollar, The Man Who Drew London

Our fawning court historians

Hywel Williams: Prince Charles has been whispering to the assembled intelligentsia that history isn't quite how he'd like it.

What to do when the words elude you.

Anyone who writes a thesis is likely to come across the problem at some time. Discover how to deal with writer's block in this extract from Rowena Murray's new book How to write a thesis

Mystic’s 350-year-old treatise to be published

Nearly 350 years ago the leading Christian mystic Thomas Traherne wrote a treatise which is regarded as astonishingly close in tone to the rapture of astronauts during the Apollo space missions 30 years ago.