2012 Books of the Year illustration ©Chris Wormell Dec 3, 2012

Best books of 2012

From 3D printing to the perfect Zen garden, FT writers and guests pick their favourite books from the past year

Folio34r: Face of Christ at the top. ©The Board of Trinity College Dubl Nov 23, 2012

The Book of Kells

John Banville on the enduring fascination of the Irish monastic masterpiece

Sir David Hannay (left), then the UK’s permanent representative at the UN, with Margaret Thatcher and her chief press secretary Bernard Ingham ©AP Philip Stephens Nov 16, 2012

Diplomatic memoirs

‘Britain’s Quest for a Role’ by David Hannay, Sherard Cowper-Coles’ ‘Ever the Diplomat’ and the UK’s struggle to exert influence in a post-imperial age

CPC National Congress ©Getty Gideon Rachman Nov 9, 2012

China and the world

Can the new leaders of the world’s fastest-growing power hold to the mantra of a ‘peaceful rise’ – or are they doomed to clash with competing nations?

On board the aircraft carrier USS Randolph, May 1945 ©akg-images Nov 2, 2012

War - what is it good for?

Robert Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, on the lessons to be drawn from 70 years of American military endeavour

The Monday Review

A celebration of technology’s power to change government is bold in scope but vague in practical detail

Small talk

Daljit Nagra

Daljit Nagra: What music helps me write? [Bob] Dylan or Jimi Hendrix at the moment to get my blood pumping

William Hague (centre) and George Osborne questioned by the BBC’s Nick Robinson (right) ©Alpha Press Oct 26, 2012

Beyond press freedom

Independent journalism and democracy need one another - but their interests do not always coincide, as John Lloyd reports

James Stewart in 'Vertigo' (1958), Alfred Hitchcock's 'creepily erotic fable' ©Allstar Peter Aspden Oct 19, 2012

Is cinema about to lose its grip?

With the big screen’s influence on the wane, new books by three critics consider the future direction of film

Biafran soldiers on army tugs in 1968 ©Getty Oct 12, 2012

Chinua Achebe’s ‘There Was a Country’

FT Africa editor William Wallis reviews a partisan account of the war that wrecked Nigeria’s post-independence hopes

West and East Germans shake hands at the Berlin Wall ©Gilles Peress/Magnum Oct 5, 2012

Wall wounds

Quentin Peel reviews Günter Grass’s ‘From Germany to Germany’, ‘Roads to Berlin’ by Cees Nooteboom, and ‘Helmut Kohl: eine politische Biographie’

Children watch a polar bear swimming at Central Park Zoo in New York ©Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Sep 28, 2012

Animal spirits

Zoos offer sanctuary to threatened species and inspiration to human visitors - but at what cost? By Stephen Cave

Wordpower

working words

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EDITOR’S CHOICE

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James Ferguson's illustration of a squirrel with an axe ©James Ferguson Nicola Barkerr is nonplussed by the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award

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Claudia Roden ©Guardian News Claudia Roden says her 20-year-old self would be pleased that she still feels the same

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