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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

Dan Sperrin State of Ridicule A history of satire in English literature 816pp. Princeton University Press. £38 (US $45). In State of Ridicule: A history of satire in English literature, Dan Sperrin ha

Best books… Roy Foster The emeritus professor of ...

You wouldn’t guess from the cover design—three songbirds silhouetted over swatches of picturesque Englishness—but Catherine Clarke’s A History of England in 25 Poems hits one of its sweet spots with a

For 11 or 12 days in 1654, Anna Trapnel, a self-styled prophet from Poplar, lay in a stupor in an inn near Whitehall. With her eyes shut and her body unmoving, she spoke and sang prophecies to the cro