Books & arts

Poetry on the Tube
The mysterious poets of the London Underground drop their masks

Previously known as N1 and E1, the duo have fans around the world

The white stuff
The peculiar allure of snow

Anthony Wood considers both its science and its enticements

Pleasure principles
An inspiring history of the Enlightenment

Today’s arguments are often conducted with weapons and tactics honed three centuries ago

Johnson
Accent discrimination betrays a small mind

Some in France want to make it illegal. But education can help, too

Fear and loathing
Assessing the threat from America’s far right

The real worry may not be large-scale violence but the “mainstreaming of extremism”

The room where it happens
William Kentridge contemplates history and creation

At 65, the South African artist is about to unveil his most mesmerising work

Private passions
Books by our writers

Our correspondents pondered economics, jewellery, revolution, sport and the pandemic

Cold comforts
Our books of the year

They were about corruption, revolutionaries, Glasgow in the 1980s, John Maynard Keynes and musical lives

Too beautiful
An exhilarating life of Mozart

Jan Swafford peppers his biography of a genius with astute critical judgments

Cops and plotters
In “The Abstainer”, Ian McGuire returns to the 19th century

The author of “The North Water” weaves a tale of policemen and Irish insurgents in Manchester

Thar she blew
An elegy for the world’s biggest creatures

An encounter with a dying whale on a beach in Perth set off Rebecca Giggs’s inquiry

Brothers in arms
When a fraternity of revolutionaries evolved across Asia

A brilliant new history uncovers the underworld of empire