Things Noted Here & There

Simon Jenkins, "English history: why we need to understand 1066 and all that," Guardian, 1 September, tackles Richard J. Evans's essay, "The Wonderfulness of Us," LRB, 17 March.

Blake Gopnik's "7 Must-See Fall Art Shows," Daily Beast, 3 September, is actually 8 "must-see shows". If only one, my choice would be: "Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan," an exhibit at London's National Gallery. A. S. Byatt, "Richard Dadd: the fairy king," Guardian, 2 September, reviews Nicholas Tromans's new biography, Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum.

Judith Warner, "Was Coco Chanel a Nazi Agent?" NYT, 2 September, reviews Hal Vaughan's Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War. Richard Evans, "The Mistakes," The Book, 1 September, reviews Zara Steiner's The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933-1939.

Kathryn Schulz, "Errol Morris Looks for the Truth in Photography," NYT, 1 September, reviews Errol Morris's Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography. In a slide show, "They Were There: 9/11 Photographers," Life, September, photographers of that day reflect on their experience.

Jacob Silverman reviews Manan Ahmed's Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination for The National, 2 September. Manan's book will be officially launched in New York on 26 September and we're all invited!