Eat, drink and be merry

Dan Sperrin State of Ridicule A history of satire in English literature 816pp. Princeton University Press. £38 (US $45). In State of Ridicule: A history of satire in English literature, Dan Sperrin ha

As fascism hovers, austerity holds its nerve and access to basic resources divides the ‘haves’ from the ‘have nots’, these are not the politest of times. Perhaps it was inevitable that something so po

Felipe Fernández-Armesto takes a leap in the dark

You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a

‘Dinner parties – are they dead?’

‘Green sickness’, also known as the ‘disease of virgins’ – a diagnosis applied mainly to teenage girls from the 16th to the 19th centuries – is one of the most puzzling conditions in the history of me