Between the Monster and the Saint is the latest in a series of meditations on the nature of morality by the former bishop of Edinburgh - a man who, for many conservative Christians, has stretched the definition of liberal theology past breaking point, while remaining for many non-believers the most humane and persuasive apologist for faith. In this extended essay on the nature of good and evil and the evolution [...]

The dedication page in Adam Mars-Jones's latest novel, Pilcrow, reads: "In memory of the Net Book Agreement 1900-1997, unglamorous defender of my trade." I haven't been as moved in a long while by an inscription.

Ah, the Net Book Agreement. Who remembers it now, except as a quaint anachronism, in these days when "price-fixing" is the enemy of that most sacred of individual freedoms, consumer choice? It seems hard to [...]

The appearance of this new edition of the Granta Book of the American Short Story, 15 years after its predecessor, is partly testament to the current health of the form in the United States. Roughly a quarter of the stories collected here come from some of the most celebrated American fiction writers to emerge in recent years, including Nathan Englander, Z Z Packer, George Saunders, Nell Freudenberger, Jhumpa Lahiri and [...]

Jeanette Winterson's recent novels have been attempts to reinvent the form for a modern age, strange and beautiful parables that dispense with straightforward narratives; cutting and pasting and following Christina Rosetti's injunction to "tell the truth, but tell it slant". (In Lighthousekeeping, her narrator lives in a sloping house, so that she literally "came at life at an angle".) Into these experiments with language and story she mixes what she [...]

Back in 2005, Luc Jacquet's documentary March of the Penguins became an unlikely inspiration for the Christian right in the US culture wars.

The group of emperor penguins going about their penguin business was held up as illustrating that biblical values, particularly monogamy, perseverance and family commitment, are inherent in nature. Others have drafted the penguins into making a case for intelligent design and a case against abortion. As the [...]

In his non-fiction study of Stalin's Russia, Koba the Dread (2002), Martin Amis asked about life in the Gulag: "What made the difference between succumbing and surviving?" His answer - "In a place dedicated to death, what you needed in yourself was force of life" - could be the tag-line for a redemptive Holocaust movie, but did little to offer a clear definition of this "force". House of Meetings, Amis's [...]

While nothing about the guttural vigour of Patti Smith's distinctive voice betrays her age (57), one song on Trampin' (Columbia), her first studio album in four years, marks it as unmistakably contemporary. "Radio Baghdad" is a strident 12-minute proclamation of the past glories of "the cradle of civilisation on the banks of the Euphrates". As the coursing, distorted guitars rise to a crescendo, Smith cries: "They're robbing the cradle", and [...]

When George Harrison died of cancer on 29 November 2001, most of the obituaries, perhaps understandably, concentrated on the early part of his career. They paid tribute to the "Quiet Beatle" responsible for such hits as "Here Comes the Sun", "Something" and "Taxman" (as well as the odd nifty guitar solo), but kept outside the chalk circle of genius drawn around John and Paul. Reading them, you might be forgiven [...]

The extraordinary success of her debut album, Come Away With Me, made Norah Jones the target of a certain kind of musical snobbery, as if the cachet of signing to John Coltrane's Blue Note label was cancelled out by the posters of her that appeared all over the windows of Woolworths. Jones's husky, jazz-flavoured songs were sniff- ily described by some as "dinner-party music", meaning that it was pleasant, melodic [...]

The tale of how Audrey Niffenegger's first novel began life with a negligible print run and became a bestseller in the US, with rights sold in more than 15 countries and film rights bought by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, transforming the fortunes not only of the author but of her tiny, independent literary publisher, is even more heart-warming than the story that it tells. The Time Traveller's Wife has [...]