In his recently published A History of the Novel in Britain, Philip Hensher makes a bold claim. Historical novels, he tells us, don’t last. However popular and prestigious a historical novel might... Read more »
The literary power couple is a historically seductive concept. Two writers sharing a life, their private and creative worlds entwined, each becoming witness to and critic of the other’s work. Think Simone... Read more »
At the end of a night in a London pub, after last orders have been called, three friends are joking about what role they’d serve on a remote desert island, with no... Read more »
The billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality.... Read more »
This is really two books in one. The first part consists of the diaries written by Antony Sher in the six months before his death from liver cancer in December 2021. The... Read more »
John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as “the world’s most famous unknown artist. Everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does.” Others were more vicious, portraying her as a family... Read more »
The second novel by South African author Nadia Davids, winner of the 2024 Caine prize, is set in a “small unnamed city in a colonial empire”, shortly after the end of the first... Read more »
Tom Paulin and Sarah Howe are among the poets shortlisted for this year’s £25,000 TS Eliot prize, the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious award for a single volume of poetry. The shortlist... Read more »
As a youth she wasnât popular among her peers. âFat and freckly with red hair and mad about horses,â remembers Clarissa Churchill. âWe used to bully her.â Nancy Mitford was no kinder:... Read more »