A collection of twenty reviews, essays and pieces of memoir selected from three decades of the author's contributions to the London review of books. Subjects include Robespierre and Danton, the Hite report, Saudi Arabia (where she lived for four years in the 1980s), the Bulger case, John Osborne, the Virgin Mary as well as the pop icon Madonna, and Helen Duncan, Britain's last witch. There are essays about Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, Christopher...