Donald Sassoon

Donald Sassoon who teaches history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, is the author of One Hundred Years of Socialism.

Letter

The Pope wears Prada

5 January 2012

‘Does Benedict XVI go about in red slippers?’ Marina Warner asks (LRB, 5 January). She can rest reassured. He goes about in red handmade calfskin shoes. Anti-clerical rumours spread by the usual clique of godless Darwinians suggest they are made by Prada. In fact they are made by a specialist shoemaker based in Piedmont who also supplied his predecessor.

Venus in Blue Jeans: the Mona Lisa

Charles Nicholl, 4 April 2002

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa may be ‘the world’s most famous painting’ but almost everything about it is obscure. We don’t know precisely when it was painted, we...

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So far, so-so

Peter Clarke, 6 June 1996

There is no time like the present for looking at the history of socialism. In Britain, the Labour Party stands poised to win office, maybe this year rather than next, and with a credible prospect...

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