Making your mind up: the best descriptions of indecision in literature
The last word, our series about emotions and states of mind in books, focuses on depictions of dithering this month, from Hamlet to the ‘maybe-boyfriend’ of Anna Burns’s Milkman
December 2021
Brief letters
Taxpayers are once again footing the bill
Brief letters
Rub the lamp and wish for a Covid booster
April 2021
Books that made me
Edmund de Waal: ‘If I need to forget everything, I read Lee Child. Honestly’
The artist, potter and author on his middle-of-the-night anxiety reading, wanting to be a poet, and the Japanese classic he wishes he had read
February 2021
Books that made me
Jane Smiley: 'I couldn't finish Philip Roth's American Pastoral. I tossed it'
The Pulitzer winner on her love of Trollope, her passion for cooking and the Ian McEwan novel she feels is overrated
June 2020
Tips, links and suggestions
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
November 2019
Books that made me
Ann Patchett: ‘Hunger by Roxane Gay opened my eyes’
The novelist on learning from John Updike, failing to read Anthony Trollope and the laugh-out-loud comedy of Nina Stibbe
April 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 books about horses – Jane Smiley picks her favourites
Childhood classics, colourful racers and memoirs of horse whisperers … the novelist and horse lover gallops through the best riding reads
October 2017
Top 10s
Martin Luther's children: the top 10 Protestants in fiction
On 31 October 1517, Luther kickstarted a revolution in Christianity that can still be felt in novels by authors from Daniel Defoe to John Updike
September 2017
Books blog
Revenge of Gatsby, Mrs De Winter... the never-ending love for literary sequels
Little Women, Les Misérables and now Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde have all spawned followups by different authors. But are they ever any good?
November 2016
Top 10s
Top 10 books about women in the British empire
From desert treks and imprisonment to unexpected love and bitter conflict, a historian chooses books that record remarkable, but often forgotten, lives
July 2016
Books blog
Literary guides to Brexit: secessions in fiction
Few authors have imagined states breaking from their geopolitical allegiances – but Chesterton, Churchill and George RR Martin are among those who have
March 2016
BBC's Night Manager beats ITV's Doctor Thorne in ratings battle
Country doctor vies with spies in Sunday night TV ratings battle
January 2016
TV and radio blog
Forget War and Peace – 1970s costume drama The Pallisers is the thing to watch
When Alan Rickman was a star at the bar
December 2015
Readers suggest the 10 best …
Readers suggest the 10 best vicars
Recently we brought you our 10 best vicars. Here are your suggestions as to who should have made the list
November 2015
Anthony Trollope tops Hatchards poll to find best novel of past 200 years
London’s oldest bookshop chooses first instalment of Trollope’s Barsetshire Chronicles, The Warden, as best novel published since the shop’s opening in 1797
August 2015
Reading American cities
Reading American cities: books about Cincinnati
From the origins of Uncle Tom to the stories of revolutionary, radical women, Michael Griffith takes us on a tour of literary Cincinnati – including Toni Morrison, Edmund White and a drive to attract America’s best poets
July 2015
It’s pointless projecting prudery on to classics. There’s bawdiness everywhere
Letters: Trollope manages to slip in ‘There’s nothing like a good screw’, and even the F-word