In the Critics section of this week’s New Statesman, our Critic at large is Craig Raine, who writes about Tate Liverpool’s exhibition of late Turner, Monet and Twombly. The show, Raine argues, “passes the kleptomania test with ease. There are many, many works here that one would steal without compunction were theft possible with impunity.” Of Turner’s painting of the salute in Venice, Raine says “There is something candidly magical at work. The same applies to Monet.” As for Twombly, Raine maintains he is a “great painter, the equal of Turner and Monet”.

In Books, former Labour Cabinet minister Andrew Adonis reviews The Passage of Power, the fourth volume of Robert A Caro’s monumental biography of Lyndon B Johnson. This book, which deals with the first year of LBJ’s presidency, shows, Adonis writes, that “Lyndon Johnson left behind the second most substantial legacy of any US president of the 20^th century, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt”. The “compass” of Johnson’s presidency was set, Adonis argues, within days of his assumption of it following the assassination of John F Kennedy. “Within weeks, its triumphs and its disasters were equally foretold.”

Also in Books: John Gray reviews a new edition of Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary; Guy Dammann on Soul Music by Candace Allen; Olivia Laing reviews Anne Carson’s translation of Sophocles’s Antigone; and Helen Lewis on Breasts: a Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams.

Elsewhere in the Critics: Ryan Gilbey on Lynn Shelton’s slacker comedy Your Sister’s Sister; Rachel Cooke on Armando Ianucci’s Veep; “The many moods of Marilyn, à la Andy Warhol”, a poem by John Kinsella; Andrew Billen on The Last of the Haussmans at the National Theatre; Antonia Quirke on The Cave on Radio 4. PLUS: Will Self’s "Real Meals".