With 7,000 living languages now in the world, there are countless pitfalls for translators, as John Barton demonstrates

There is no single community, Harry Freedman stresses, but a multitude of voices ranging from the liberal to the ultra-orthodox

Mrs Yi is a folk healer in a remote Chinese village where the living commune with the dead and rocks relay warning messages

Lily Le Brun explores our shifting relationship with the shoreline through works by Vanessa Bell, Paul Nash, Bridget Riley and other modernists

There are hard-hitting thrillers from Margie Orford and Rijula Das – as well as an engaging mystery by Erri de Luca

When an Irish shipbuilder’s son was crowned king of a Caribbean rock in 1880, few would have guessed how long this eccentric monarchy would last

Witold Rybczynski’s majestic survey takes us from Brittany in 4,800 BC to Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry

There’s advice on pressure cooking and butter-making, plus simple recipes for family meals, Mediterranean vegan dishes and south Asian specialities

The veteran journalist Fergal Keane describes the horror of witnessing atrocities worldwide – and his mystifying compulsion to return for more

Donna Freed finally learns the truth about her biological parents, whose insurance fraud in 1960s America resembled the plot of Double Indemnity

Tom Harper exposes deep-grained criminality at the Met, including actively assisting violent offenders and stealing thousands from the public purse

Lenin and Mussolini were chief among 20th-century leaders who owed their initial success purely to chance, says Ian Kershaw

Twin brothers sponsor a radical building programme in postwar Britain – but the collapse of a tower block raises questions of conscience and accountability

The vast majority of significant finds are now unearthed by amateurs – including the Nebra Sky Disc, the centrepiece of the British Museum’s recent Stonehenge exhibition