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

A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National ...

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

As a child, I loved the Milly-Molly-Mandy books written by Joyce Lankester Brisley and of course I wanted to be that little girl in her perfect pink and white striped dress! I think what appealed to m

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.

Without the generosity of one remarkable man, Sir James Roberts, the Brontë Parsonage Museum might never have come to be. Roberts’ own rags-to-riches story sounds like something from a book. He was bo