Literature
By the book: The NSA is behaving like a villain in a 1950s novel
The continuing drip-feed of stories about governments and friendly-seeming internet giants sifting through our data has left some citizens feeling…
Breakdowns, suicide attempts — and four great novels
Among the clever young Australians who came over here in the 1960s to find themselves and make their mark, a…
'Where are the happy fictional spinsters?'
This book arose from an argument. Lifelong bookworm Samantha Ellis and her best friend had gone to Brontë country and…
Look! Shakespeare! Wow! George Eliot! Criminy! Jane Austen!
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
Lose weight the Muriel Spark way
Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from…
Mind your language: The springs before the Arab Spring
Two hundred and forty-years ago next Tuesday, Thomas Gray was buried in his mother’s grave in Stoke Poges churchyard. In…
