The last grand old man

It all started promisingly enough. French biologist Gabriela Lobinska had enjoyed her Ph.D. training, researching how organisms change over time. Arriving at Harvard Medical School in September 2024,

A biography is a daunting task for any writer. How can you summarise a life? Can you realistically cover all of the source material? If the subject is well known, there are probably rival biographies.

The elevator pitch made this trip sound very glamorous, but it’s nearing 43ºC and I’ve been stooping around in the desert for over an hour, eyes fixed on the arid earth. We’re in the Turkana Basin in

Had Robin Holloway published Music’s Odyssey—described by its author as “an invitation to the glorious long voyage of Western classical music”—30 years ago, he might well have got away with it. By day

THROUGHOUT history, women have paved the way to a brighter future in politics, science, society, the arts, literacy and countless other fields. We’ve had Rosalind Franklin, the chemist responsible for

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