Spelling it out: the volunteers who made the dictionary
From an employee of a tram company in Birkenhead to the deeply eccentric Alexander Ellis, a celebration of the army of unpaid contributors to the first edition of the OED
No chocolate-box portrait: Bournville, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
Queasy nostalgia gives way to mounting anger in a satirical novel about post-war Britain, seen through the eyes of a Birmingham family
Robert Harris's gripping Act of Oblivion is let down by anachronisms
When Charles II became king of England in 1660, he pardoned most of those who’d committed crimes during the civil…
What do Beethoven, D.H. Lawrence and George Best have in common?
This is not a book about tennis. Roger Federer appears early on, trailed by the obligatory question ‘When will he…
An inspirational teacher: Elizabeth Finch, by Julian Barnes, reviewed
‘Whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three…
Are the English exceptionally gullible?
The word ‘hoax’ did not catch on till the early 19th century. Before that one spoke of a hum, a…
A tide of paranoid distrust: The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, by M. John Harrison, reviewed
Over the past 50 years, M. John Harrison has produced a remarkably varied body of work: a dozen atmospheric novels…
Science and philanthropy meet in the Royal Society of Arts
What does Jony Ive, the designer of Apple’s iPhone, have in common with Peter Perez Burdett, the first Englishman to…
London has a genius for self-renewal — but what do we miss as a result?
In the autumn of 1987, after London had been hit by a fierce storm, Simon Jenkins wandered through Bloomsbury and…
Can giving voice to the horrors of the past re-traumatise?
It is 50 years since Ronald Blythe published Akenfield, his melancholy portrait of a Suffolk village on the cusp of…
A love letter to all great dictionaries
Asked to name a reference book, you may well choose the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. But…
Ben Judah feels like a stranger in his native London
‘I was born in London,’ Ben Judah tells us early in this vivid portrait of Britain’s capital, ‘but I no…
Shakespeare’s stagecraft — and his greatest players
How many books are there about Shakespeare? A study published in the 1970s claimed a figure of 11,000, and today…
