Hamnet fails Shakespeare
Paul Mescal’s portrayal leans more on grief than genius
ByLiterature
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of literature with our collection of articles, offering literary analysis, book recommendations, author spotlights, and thought-provoking discussions that celebrate the written word.
From the archive: Mr Eliot’s poems
1926: How TS Eliot’s “music of ideas” saved a generation
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TS Eliot’s Hollow Men are all around us
The poem, which was published 100 years ago, has beguiled a remarkable array of minds
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DH Lawrence and the superiority of fiction
The Goldsmiths Prize Lecture on 100 years of the writer’s seminal essay “Why the Novel Matters”
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Reluctant Cheats: a story by Anton Chekhov
In this short story, appearing in English for the first time, New Year’s party guests battle against time
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Never recommend Philip Roth to your mother
Her face was a mask of horror
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Iris Murdoch’s poems were better left in the attic
A cache of newly unearthed works is not the “thrilling literary discovery” their publisher claims
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The real crisis of literacy – we’re reading too much
In the age of AI, with its blizzard of words, we should relish our pre-linguistic sensibilities
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David Szalay: “I think of myself as a European novelist”
The Booker Prize winner on masculinity, sex and what Keir Starmer should read
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Why László Krasznahorkai won the Nobel Prize in Literature
The Hungarian author’s work has a huge and haunting vision
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Thomas Pynchon’s lasting triumph
His latest novel borrows too freely from his previous work. But what work it has been
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Has Kemi Badenoch actually read Terry Pratchett?
She claims he’s her favourite author, but his books have a few lessons for her
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The terrible contradictions of Tolstoy
Maxim Gorky’s reminiscences about his literary hero are just as avant-garde today as they were in the 1920s
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The good fortune of growing older
Also this week: City kids on country farms, and keeping on lurruping
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The manosphere’s literary muscle men
Two novels explore the crippling solitude of a pair of ripped English professors
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Christopher Marlowe’s stage fright
Stephen Greenblatt’s attempt to reconstruct the playwright’s story is brilliant – but Marlowe the man remains a mystery
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Constantine Cavafy’s melancholy and majesty
The 20th-century Greek-Alexandrian poet wrote of a faded grandeur that stood for all humanity.
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Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures in storytelling
A new biography reveals the author as shaped by conflicting influences – and affirms his status as a serious writer.
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Lord Byron’s sex education
This summer, take the epic satire Don Juan to the beach.
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What Bridget Phillipson can learn from Conservative education policy
In a new book, the former schools minister Nick Gibb defends a strong, if controversial legacy.
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