Sir Peter Strawson

Obituary: Prime philosopher of Oxford's golden age, and champion of both the richness of ordinary language and of natural beliefs.

Immortal longings

Richard Davenport-Hines captivates Simon Callow with the powerful imaginative vortex of Proust's life and work in A Night at the Majestic.

Claire Armitstead on Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl by cross-dressing prizewinner Grayson Perry and Wendy Jones.

Andrew Motion is entertained by Simon Gray's meandering musings in The Year of the Jouncer.

Renaissance mage, visionary and militant medic - Philip Ball reveals Paracelsus as all that and much more in The Devil's Doctor, says PD Smith.

Lucasta Miller on a quartet of Mozartian biographies from David Cairns, Anthony Holden, Julian Rushton and Stanley Sadie.

Tom Dewe Matthews races through Norma Barzman's lively record of life in exile, The Red and the Blacklist.

A cultural ambassador, Hayter wrote scholarly but readable studies of history

Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, Stewart Granger, Mae West - some of Hollywood's greatest stars were also its worst advertisement, says Chris Petit.

Alfred Hickling wades through Eric Sykes's rambling autobiography, If I Don't Write It, Nobody Else Will.

Max Egremont struggles with the suffocating gloominess of the poet's postwar life in his skilful biography of Siegfried Sassoon, says Andrew Motion.

Geoffrey Robertson impresses Michael Moorcock with his biography of the lawyer who prosecuted Charles I, The Tyrannicide Brief.