In the early 1860s Sicily was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy. Soon after, visitors to the island discovered what they believed was a criminal fraternity at work in Palermo and its environs. Th

The description of money as dirty has a long history in English literature, from Shylock’s account of usury to Martin Amis’s novel Money (1984) to Caryl Churchill’s play Serious Money (1987). Mostly t

Lola Young Eight Weeks Looking back, moving forwards, defying the odds 336pp. Penguin. Paperback, £10.99. Lola Young has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2004. She is also an emeri

John P. Murphy New Deal Art 336pp. Thames and Hudson. Paperback, £19.99. Seymour Fogel’s “Wealth of the Nation”, installed in 1942 in a federal building in Washington DC, depicts a group of workers en

Gerald Howard’s The Insider is a crowded but colourful portrait of Malcolm Cowley, poet, editor and chronicler of the so-called Lost Generation – those American exemplars of literary modernism who, li

Reality is far stranger than fiction, and this is certainly true of my family history. I am one of seven American children born to Hungarian physicians Clara and Julian Ambrus who grew up in Budapest