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The Olympics will showcase a metropolis with global appeal – but old tensions endure
An exhibition in Florence highlights the city’s place in the imagination of US artists before the first world war
Andrew Motion’s sequel to ‘Treasure Island’ captures something of the old magic
Painter Maro Gorky, who left hectic London for Tuscany, talks about the sense of belonging to a particular country
A festival honours the county’s most esteemed novelist and woman of ideas
The author of a bestseller on the economic crisis asks why the literary world is wary of finance
This week’s films reviewed: ‘Rampart’, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, ‘Safe House’, ‘The Adopted’ and ‘Black Gold’
This series of review-essays draws overlapping portraits of writers’ relationships with their families
The outsider and self-promoter was no one’s stereotype of an Englishman
A warning bell should sound when you start letting your little conviction swamp your brain and take over your life
Does the phrase ‘Eton mess’ best describe the state of the nation rather than a favourite pudding?
There is something about the idea of handing out a can of Coke to every single inhabitant of the planet that thrills me
From the Man Booker Prize shortlist to the e-book market, the thriller is gaining ground
Christopher Hitchens’ fierce certainties make for fine polemic but they have often obscured reality
A co-editor of Frieze picks out a few of the best
The final volume of Benjamin Markovits’ trilogy unpeels Byron’s life
The novelist Alan Hollinghurst drinks a fruit cocktail and talks to Emily Stokes about vegetarianism, his days as a raver and the unknowable truths of biography
The Soane museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is liberatingly free of cant
How does one escape from an obligation to speak for an hour about Henry James?
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