Alice Loxton EleanorA 200-mile walk in search of England’slost queen352pp. Pan Macmillan. £22. Many are commemorated in stone, but few so grandly as Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290). Following her unexpec

George Saunders Vigil 192pp. Bloomsbury. £18.99. Four years after publishing Lincoln in the Bardo (TLS, March 10, 2017), George Saunders hinted that he was drawn to writing a longer second novel, capt

Judy Blume’s Superfudge was in our tiny school library, and I wolfed it down at the age of eight. From then, I was side-by-side with all of Judy’s kids, right the way up to 17-year-old Katherine in Fo

A letter, a book and two paintings by Tracey Emin; right, Ruth Fairlight’s copy of The Colossus Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe were both in their twenties when they met in a bookshop in Nottingham.

Enrique Vila-Matas Montevideo Translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott 240pp. Yale University Press. £14.99 (US $27). “Words are poor mountaineers and poor miners”, lamented the young Franz Kaf

The author Alex Preston spent his childhood dreaming of Greece, but it wasn’t until he visited Corfu that he found what he was looking for – along with the inspiration for his latest novel