Leah Williamson, Michael Morpurgo, Julia Donaldson and Richard Osman are among those who have thrown their weight behind a new nationwide push to get people reading for pleasure, as the government and... Read more »
In Erin Somers’s The Ten Year Affair, Cora, a millennial mother, craves a bygone kind of passion from a bygone kind of man. Unfortunately for her, morality in 2015 is rigid and... Read more »
Beginning I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to write a first sentence so idiosyncratic, so indelible, so entirely your own that it makes people sit up or reach for... Read more »
If you have seen a news story declaring 2025’s chosen “word of the year” in recent weeks, you might be forgiven for asking yourself: what, another one? Depending on which dictionary you... Read more »
The creator of some of British television’s most beloved sitcoms, a Match of the Day presenter and a Chuckle Brother are among the figures from the arts and media to be recognised... Read more »
There aren’t many giants of 20th-century literature still writing, but 2025 saw the first novel in 12 years from American great Thomas Pynchon, now in his late 80s: Shadow Ticket (Jonathan Cape) is a typically... Read more »
Fiction The Guardian’s fiction editor picks the best of the year, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count to Thomas Pynchon’s return, David Szalay’s Booker winner and a remarkable collection of short stories.... Read more »
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist Liz Pelly (Hodder & Stoughton) Enraging, thoroughly depressing, but entirely necessary, Mood Music offers a timely, forensically researched demolition... Read more »
This felt like the year that AI really arrived. It is on our phones and laptops; it is creeping into digital and corporate infrastructure; it is changing the way we learn, work and... Read more »