Artemis Cooper, Sue Prideaux and Cal Revely-Calder talks to Miles Young - What Makes a Great Non-fiction Book?  And Just Why it Matters. Celebrate with a Free Glass of Champagne

He has been tarred as a French colonialist who spread syphilis to underage girls in the South Seas. But, writes the author of an acclaimed new book, fresh discoveries challenge this view of the artist...

Toby Lichtig chats to Sam Leith about formative literature at Jewish Book Week and David Horspool meets Sue Prideaux, winner of this year’s Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize

It's a nonfiction book prize that values "style, rigour, argument, meatiness, readability, freshness, oddity and individuality," says Minoo Dinshaw, author of Friends in Youth and one of this year's…

Artemis Cooper and Cal Revely-Calder talks to Miles Young - What Makes a Great Non-fiction Book?  And Just Why it Matters

It's a nonfiction book prize that values "style, rigour, argument, meatiness, readability, freshness, oddity and individuality," says Minoo Dinshaw, author of Friends in Youth and one of this year's…

SHORTLIST Winner announcement 3 March 2025 SHORTLIST Winner announcement 3 March 2025

Piers Brendon: Bones of Contention - Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor

These creatures were 19th-century celebrities, says Adam Ford

Dinosaurs: a Victorian obsession

YouTube video by UnHerd

Impossible Monsters captivatingly outlines how the unearthing of strange bones toppled traditional understanding of the origins of the world

A fresh take on the familiar tale of how Darwin and dinosaur bones shook the faith of Victorians

As prehistoric bones were unearthed, some Victorians wondered about the timeline of creation and the nature of God.

Mary Anning was only twelve when her older brother Joseph entrusted her with a task that would have serious ramifications for our understanding of time,

A marvellous history of science vs creationism in Victorian Britain

We are celebrating The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 by inviting each of the shortlisted authors to share their favourite non-fiction books. Here are Michael Taylor’s recommendations.

SHORTLIST Winner announcement 3 March 2025 SHORTLIST Winner announcement 3 March 2025

Yet, as with others, controversy and talent were part of the same palette

Sue Prideaux’s biography of the unruly French painter shows his story was more complicated than that of colonial seducer.

In this week's Book Club podcast Sam Leith’s guest is the great Sue Prideaux who, after her prize-winning biographies of Nietzsche, Munch and Strindberg, has turned her attention to Gauguin in Wild Th...

Sue Prideaux’s reflective and lyrical biography of Paul Gaugin, Wild Thing, offers a stout defence of the great artist

The artist’s unfair reputation as a syphilis-spreading paedophile has overshadowed his work, but this sympathetic biography is a heroic rehabilitation

Syphilitic love rat of the South Seas. Vincent van Gogh’s nemesis. The amoral genius who ditched his wife and family to flit off to French Polynesia. Paul Gauguin is the bad boy of modernist painting....

This detailed biography complicates our perception of the bad boy of French art and illuminates his fraught friendship with Van Gogh

We are celebrating The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize 2025 by inviting each of the shortlisted authors to share their favourite non-fiction books. Here are Sue Prideaux’s recommendations.

It's a nonfiction book prize that values "style, rigour, argument, meatiness, readability, freshness, oddity and individuality," says Minoo Dinshaw, author of Friends in Youth and one of this year's…

SHORTLIST Winner announcement 3 March 2025 SHORTLIST Winner announcement 3 March 2025

James VI and I called the first duke of Buckingham ‘Steenie’ – short for St Stephen, who, it was said, had the...

His legs were considered a wonder of the world and many thought his ambition led him to poison James I, but Lucy Hughes-Hallett reveals the truth about George Villers.