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The Battle of Britain and the campaign by the French Resistance make ideal settings for fiction, since they are full of potential for conflict, romance, adventure, heroism and moral dilemmas. In this first novel, Patrick Bishop has exploited these rich possibilities to produce a gripping story. He has already proved himself a fine military historian, with two best-selling books on the second world war, the first about the fighter pilots who defeated the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940, the second about the RAF’s bomber offensive over Germany. Bishop has put his understanding of the period to good use in this tale, conjuring up the atmosphere and linguistic idioms of wartime.

Mirabel Cecil reviews Judith Mackrell's biography of Lydia Lopokova . Judith Mackrell describes her subject as ‘a star whom the world almost forgot’. Lydia herself lamented, on the death of Pavlova, that ‘a dancer can leave nothing behind her. Music will not help us to see her again and to feel what she could give us, nor the best words.’ And her own career vanished even more completely than most. That might be so, yet in this absorbing biography Lydia Lopokova comes alive again on every page.

When the planes flew into the Twin Towers many rushed to declare it the end of the end of history. But it was not. All the plans that emerged immediately afterwards about how to remake the Middle East were premised upon the assumption that history was at an end; that the world was moving inexorably towards liberal, market democracy. Indeed, al-Qa’eda’s nihilism appeared to prove that in the war of ideas, democracy’s dominance remained unchallenged. It seemed that the 9/11 attacks, far from marking the end of the end of history might actually have speeded its arrival. Today, though, the world looks starkly different. For the first time in a quarter of a century, democracy is on the back foot and facing a serious ideological challenge.

There are now two full columns of entries on the ‘Also by Doris Lessing’ page — 58 separate books. Along with work of an entirely fantastical, invented variety there is a good body of her work which shades off, in calibrated degrees, from the realist and directly observed novel, towards the autobiographical fiction, and into autobiography proper. The urge to give an account of her own life has been a constant incentive from the Children of Violence sequence which begins with Martha Quest. There are, too, novels such as the recent, excellent The Sweetest Dream where we are invited to consider an autobiographical component, as well as two volumes of formal autobiography. All the same, she has never written a book much like Alfred and Emily.

The commentariat has at last realised that in practice, if not in theory, the Labour Party believes in the hereditary principle. This is a phenomenon that those of us who, for one reason or another, have innate antennae for such things have long recognised. Homo sapiens in settled societies is more likely to follow anthropology than ideology and therefore successful politics has been more acutely analysed by Mary Douglas than by Marx. What perhaps, however, has been forgotten in the rush to dump on Gordon Brown is quite how weird the Blair régime was. Michael Levy’s book provides us with a reminder. (In accordance with New Labour practice, he calls himself ‘Lord Michael Levy’ although the son of neither a duke nor a marquess.

There is growing unease at the contemporary proliferation and inflation of human rights. Not only do undeserving cases benefit from over-generous or quixotic judicial interpretations of Labour’s Human Rights Act, but there is a booming business in ascribing rights to groups. Peoples, nations, races, ethnic, cultural and religious groups are now perceived to have rights deriving somehow from their mere existence. To individuals, meanwhile, are ascribed — sometimes with the force of law — rights to such things as life, jobs, education, health, emotional well-being, self-fulfilment, holidays with pay and even happiness. Whence do these rights derive, how should we determine what they are and how far should they go?

‘Why have we come here? The Directory has deported us,’ grumbled the heat-stricken and exhausted soldiers of Napoleon’s Army of the Orient, having travelled for days across the desert to a spot just west of Cairo. There, at what would later be called the Battle of the Pyramids, they would face the forces of the Ottoman governor Murad Bey. Napoleon lifted his men’s spirits with a vision of history: ‘Go and remember that 40 centuries are looking down upon you,’ he told them. Though opposed by ‘vastly superior Mamluk forces’, the French exploited discipline, firepower and innovative tactics to win the day.

If you think that you or anyone else knows anything for certain about the universe, or stack of universes or whatever it is, you are probably wrong. I say probably because it is impossible in this world to be certain about anything. The firm ground of reality that progressive thinkers once expected to discover through science has been abolished by science itself, and we are wrapped in the same cloud of unknowing that has enveloped us since the beginning. Uncertainty is our constant condition, but Heisenberg’s recognition of it as a universal principle dismayed the progressives. They should stop worrying, according to Michio Kaku. The further you look into the universe the more interesting and attractive it appears.