They were dismissed as paper jokes, the pictorial maunderings of an old man – but the dazzlingly bright cutouts Matisse made in his last decade show a period of vitality and radical reinvention, writes Hilary Spurling

Bridget Riley burst on to the art scene in the mid-1960s with violent, dizzying canvasses, which set out to disturb perception. For Hilary Spurling, her paintings were a revelation – and remain so. An exhibition of new work recalls her early iconoclasm

When Henry Moore's sculptures were first displayed, they were so shocking opponents decapitated them and daubed them with paint. A retrospective at Tate Britain explores the impulses that led to these controversial works. It is a magnificent rehabilitation, says Hilary Spurling

Review: A Strange Eventful History by Michael Holroyd
Michael Holroyd pays due tribute to Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their vivid dramatic legacy says Hilary Spurling

Review: So I Have Thought of You Edited by Terence Dooley The humble, woolly-minded woman in Penelope Fitzgerald's letters was in reality an expert at extracting humiliation from success

Anthony Fletcher's Growing up in England features plenty of flogging and needlework but fails to question why boys and girls were pushed to extremes for so long, says Hilary Spurling

Patrick French's brilliant and candid The World Is What It Is lays bare the demons that drove one of our greatest - and most controversial - writers, says Hilary Spurling

Julian Barnes buries his feelings as well as his parents in Nothing to Be Frightened of, says Hilary Spurling

According to Shalom Auslander's Foreskin's Lament, the Jewish life is a long round of God-given oppression, says Hilary Spurling

John Stuart Mill was years ahead of his time. But why was this firebrand so cold? asks Hilary Spurling

The third volume of John Richardson's landmark biography of Picasso shows how the artist's misogyny caused huge pain - and fuelled some of his finest work, says Hilary Spurling.

Virginia Nicholson's Singled Out chronicles the women left alone and vilified after the First World War, says Hilary Spurling.