Literary essays

When an unexpected, life-altering mental disorder upended writer Lauren Brown's life, she knew the only way to get to the root would be to find the thread - wound, red, around trees, tangled and frayed in places - and start following it with her hands, hands that had betrayed her, back to the roo...

From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street, to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud, Constantine Cavafy, W. G. Sebald, John Sloan, Marcel Proust, and Fernando Pessoa, and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg, 'Hom...

Wildly irreverent and beautifully warm, this is a story about practice, competence and failure, told through tales in a world most of us never see.

Literature matters. Not only does it provide escapism and entertainment, but it also holds a mirror up to our lives to show us aspects of ourselves we may not have seen or understood. From jealousy to grief, fierce love to deep hatred, our inner lives become both stranger and more familiar when w...

How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our life? Of course, these beautiful words are sometimes true. But reading is - and can be - m...

Ours is the age of contagious anxiety. We feel overwhelmed by the events around us, by injustice, by suffering, by an endless feeling of crisis. So, how can we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, trust and believe in something better? And how can we stay sane in this age of division? In thi...

How does a painter see the world? Philip Guston, one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century, spoke about art with unparalleled candour and commitment. Touching on work from across his career as well as that of his fellow artists and Renaissance heroes, this selection of his writ...

'In Other Words' is at heart a love story - of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. An...

One big question. Two great answers. In Is Free Speech Under Threat? Two leading thinkers tackle the issue at the very heart of the culture wars.

Whether walking through awe-inspiring countryside or weaving your way through crowds in the hustle and bustle of great cities, we take thousands of steps a day. Finding meaning in movement can be difficult in today's frenetic world. This may seem like a modern problem, but putting one foot in fro...