Hilary Mantel’s death is an incalculable loss to our national life and literature
The late novelist’s extraordinary talent was to take our collective history and make it new.
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The Philip Pullman affair shows social media is where good arguments go to die
The author of His Dark Materials has spoken out against “gesture politics” – but he too adds fuel to the…
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AN Wilson: the assembly-line intellectual
The writer’s exasperating new memoir offers a full dinner service of clichés and an insight into the glib fogeyism of…
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Thus Bad Begins confirms Javier Marías as a master of the novel form
Marías’ masterful expression of his characters’ psychological weather, combined with Margaret Jull Costa’s gifted translation, makes for rewarding reading.
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Philip Larkin at 100
Writers reflect on the poet’s life, work and legacy, a century after his birth.
Donna Tartt’s The Secret History at 30
How a bestselling debut novel about a group of murderous students became a cult classic.
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Writing in the age of Big Data
Alexander Kluge’s information epic and how the time for learning is running out.
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From spy to journalist to celebrated poet: the curious life of Basil Bunting
The letters of the Northumbrian modernist reveal an idiosyncratic career and an exacting critical mind.
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