Ian Buruma on the twentieth-century Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, a fascist and a fabulist with a hunger for war and a remarkable way of capturing it; Sue Stuart-Smith on gardening in the trenches of the First World War and the concept of horticultural therapy; to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the TLS's history editor David Horspool talks us through a range of books, articles and essays covering the Second World War

Selected books

Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, by Curzio Malaparte, translated from the Italian and the French by Stephen Twilley

The Well-Gardened Mind: The restorative power of nature, by Sue Stuart-Smith

Dresden: The fire and the darkness, by Sinclair McKay

The Volunteer: The true story of the resistance hero who infiltrated Auschwitz, by Jack Fairweather

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James Waddell on the disorderly history of alphabetic order; Beejay Silcox, who fled Cairo for Western Australia as the coronavirus spread, tells a tale of star-crossed lovers; Jordan Sand gives a short cultural history of mask-wearing

A Place for Everything: The curious history of alphabetical order by Judith Flanders

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Lawrence Douglas, in Massachusetts, on the presidential past, present and future of Donald Trump; Irina Dumitrescu, in Germany, on books as escape (attempt) and reading the plague into plague-free books; Lucy Dallas presents this month’s round-up of audio / visual offerings

 

A Very Stable Genius: Donald Trump’s testing of America, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig

Unmaking The Presidency: Donald Trump’s war on the world’s most powerful office, by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes

American Carnage: On the front lines of the Republican civil war and the rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta

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William Shakespeare, the writer who – above all others, perhaps – keeps giving and giving. Michael Caines takes us through the latest research, theories and discoveries (or not, as the case may be); Why do women read more fiction than men? Lucy Scholes returns to the age-old conundrum

Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, stabbings and broken hearts by Kathryn Harkup

Untimely Death in Renaissance Drama by Andrew Griffin

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro

Shakespeare and Trump by Jeffrey R. Wilson

‘Infecting the teller – The failure of a mathematical approach to Shakespeare’s authorship’ by Brian Vickers, in this week’s TLS

Why Women Read Fiction: The stories of our lives by Helen Taylor

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Today an edition of our new daily podcast - Stories of our times. Our new free daily news podcast takes you to the heart of the stories that matter, with exclusive access and reporting. Published for the start of your day, it is hosted by Manveen Rana and David Aaronovitch.

If you want to hear more please search for Stories of our times and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

With reading on the rise under the lockdown, TLS editor Stig Abell suggests three books for a little escapism during these uncertain times. 

Stories of our times is the new daily podcast from The Times. Listen to more episodes here

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Ellen Crowell investigates an early-twentieth-century tale of doomed lesbian romance, decadent cryptography, morphine-induced suicide and more; Richard Smyth on the joys of bird-watching during lockdown; Michael Caines reads his poem “Decadence”

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A recovering Alexander van Tulleken shares some thoughts on the British response to Covid-19; What cultural things are people doing to pass the time in isolation? We asked a selection of our writers, and Lucy Dallas joins us (from what sounds like a small tin box) to pluck at the results

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Samuel Graydon reviews two new albums, by the folk troubadour Sam Lee and indie rock band Cornershop, both of which offer innovative and intelligent musical perspectives on modern England; the TLS’s arts editor Lucy Dallas presents this month’s ‘Audio/Visual’, a monthly round-up of listening and watching; Josephine Livingstone grapples with the 'omnivore paradox' in the arts sector: why broader tastes in art have not led to wider participation

Featured works

Old Wow by Sam Lee

England is a Garden by Cornershop

Audio: ‘Reply All’, the podcast

Visual: ‘Five Guys a Week’, Channel 4

Entitled: Discriminating tastes and the expansion of the arts by Jennifer C. Lena

Steal as Much as You Can: How to win the culture wars in an age of austerity by Nathalie Olah

Smashing It: Working class artists on life, art and making it happen, edited by Sabrina Mahfouz

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Tim Parks talks us through the lockdown from Milan; A. N. Wilson explains the Prayer Book Controversy of the 1920s, and why it's a bit like Brexit; and Anna Girling looks back on the - failed - poetic and critical career of Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington, Two volumes, by Vivien Whelpton

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Frances Wilson gets implausibly angry about the hypocrisy of Patrick O’Brian; Michèle Roberts makes the case for the forgotten author of the nineteenth century, George Sand; Miranda Seymour turns literary detective to identify a new work by Ada Lovelace. And Roz Dineen fails to be enticed by cakes.

Romans 1 & 2 George Sand; Edited by José-Luis Diaz and Brigitte Diaz

Patrick O’Brian – A very private life Nikolai Tolstoy

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Edmund Gordon discusses whether Hilary Mantel's final Cromwell novel lives up to its billing - and whether, at 900-odd pages, it is the right length; Muriel Zagha looks at the female gaze in French cinema, with respect to the new film Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Irina Dumitrescu talks about how to write well, and when to break the rules

The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Céline Sciamma

Why They Can't Write, by John Warner

Writing to Persuade, by Trish Hall

Every Day I Write the Book, by Amitava Kumar  

First You Write a Sentence, by Joe Moran

Meander, Spiral, Explode, by Jane Alison

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This week the TLS is running an extract from The Mirror & the Light, the long-awaited third and final volume of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels. In 1538 Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, questions Geoffrey Pole, the youngest son of a great family. Pole is accused of conspiring against Henry VIII and attempting to bring back the old religion and reinstate the Pope as head of the Church. (The Mirror & the Light will be published on March 5 by Fourth Estate. The audio book is published by W F Howes and narrated by Ben Miles.)

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James Shapiro, the author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, discusses the history of West Side Story, the most popular and successful Shakespeare musical of all time, and Ivo van Hove's flawed Broadway adaptation; Toby Lichtig reviews Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt and talks us through a selection of Jewish-focused pieces in this week's issue of the TLS; David Horspool, the TLS's history editor and a keen consumer of audiobooks, tells us what he has been listening to this month

West Side Story, directed by Ivo van Hove

Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard, Wyndham's Theatre, London, until June 13

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Rebecca Langlands on lessons learnt in the only known ancient Roman brothel; Caroline Moorehead reviews Elena Ferrante's latest novel; Rory Waterman reads a new poem, "Defences" ("'Crikey!' you say. 'It’s gorgeous!'...")

Books: 

The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, class, and gender at the margins of Roman society, by Sarah Levin-Richardson 

La vita bugiarda degli adulti, by Elena Ferrante

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The Irish novelist reads an extract from her new novel, published in this week's TLS, in print, app and online 

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Is it the best of times or the worst of times to be a satirist? Madeleine Brettingham, a writer on the BBC's News Quiz, joins us to discuss; Toby Lichtig on a new production of Endgame and the constraints imposed on Samuel Beckett adaptations; founded in the 1960s, the Oulipo was – and remains – a group of writers and scientists striving for "potential literature". Anna Aslanyan considers the movement's legacy

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in print and performance 2016–2019, by Stewart Lee

The Joke is On Us: Political comedy in (late) neoliberal times, edited by Julie A. Webber

Endgame / Rough For Theatre II, at the Old Vic theatre, London

The Oulipo and Modern Thought, by Dennis Duncan

All that is Evident is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963–2018, edited and translated by Daniel Levin Becker and Ian Monk

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One of Germany's most acclaimed novelists talks to Maren Meinhardt about his new novel, Tyll, a vivid account of a seventeenth-century trickster's journey through a Europe ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War.

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Caryl Emerson on Tolstoy’s art, ideas and life, and the extent to which these came together; Benjamin Markovits returns to a treasured childhood book: The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook; Eve Babitz – a “fizzy”, “fabulous” chronicler of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles – is mid revival. Megan Marz fills us in.

Lives and Deaths: Essential stories by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Boris Dralyuk

Leo Tolstoy: A very short introduction by Liza Knapp

Leo Tolstoy by Andrei Zorin

The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook by Gary Gygax

I Used To Be Charming: The rest of Eve Babitz, edited by Sara J. Kramer

Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the secret history of L.A., by Lili Anolik

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Lucy Dallas reports on theories, developments and disputes in the world of science fiction; Lawrence Douglas adds crucial historical context – stretching back to the Middle Ages, in fact – to the current US presidential impeachment; the poet Hannah Sullivan emerges from Princeton University Library with fresh insight into T. S. Eliot's love letters   

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin

The Expanse, Volumes 1–8, by James S. A. Corey

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Did Byron have an eating disorder? Mummy issues? Daddy issues? Does it matter? Emily A. Bernhard Jackson joins us to discuss; Stanley Donwood, the artist and designer of Radiohead's record covers, makes the case for this most democratic of artforms; Keith Miller on the work of the designer and architect Charlotte Perriand, a high-minded high modernist whose life spanned the whole of the twentieth century

The Private Life of Lord Byron by Antony Peattie

Charlotte Perriand: Complete works, by Jacques Barsac

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