“Where are we to begin?”, Virginia Woolf asks in her essay “How to Read a Book”. “How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasures from what we read?

“This tremendous aggregate of a book has many of the characteristics of a Festschrift assembled to honour some Great Influencer”: so, in 1973, the architectural historian Priscilla Metcalf began the f

“As movers and the moved both know”, John Updike noted, “books are heavy freight ... They make us think twice about changing addresses.” Books: A manifesto, or, How to build a library begins with the

Dear Simon, Once again, the December 2025 issue had lots of memories to write about. Starting from the front, Gertcha! – I did love Chas and Dave, as did my husband. Of course, the family always watch

The beauty of Lancashire’s Lune valley emerges from ...

Here’s a round number to celebrate: Poems on the Underground was launched forty years ago. “Up in the Morning Early” by Robert Burns, “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “This Is Just To Say” by Wil