Literary studies: general

The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, a good set conveyed a sense of absolute wisdom on its reader. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indi...

The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, a good set conveyed a sense of absolute wisdom on its reader. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indi...

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In 'The Book at War', acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree t...

Exploring the gardens, monuments, museums, and churches with walks both urban and rural, from the Bronté parsonage in Haworth to Zadie Smith's North London and Shakespeare's Stratford, 'The Book Lover's Bucket List' takes you through some 100 wonderfully described literary sites and landscapes, ...

A Byron biography like no other - published to mark the bicentennial of his death - it tells the remarkable life story of the celebrated Romantic poet through ten of his best, most resonant letters. Using Byron's correspondence, Stauffer relates a vivid and engaging story of creativity, fame, sex...

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us ho...

The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks on earth. How should we use them best? Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes...

The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks on earth. How should we use them best? Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes...

'A Guest at the Feast' uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it. From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, ...