From voyages to battles, gods to monsters, heroics to cowardice, the Viking sagas explore all of these themes in magnificent detail

Mighty Thor, hammer in hand, is one of the most recognisable characters in Norse mythology, synonymous with strength, virility and thunder. In the Viking Age, he was revered as a dependable presence i

Michael D. C. Drout The Tower and the Ruin J. R. R. Tolkien’s creation 384pp. Norton. £25. Giuseppe Pezzini Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation 456pp. Cambridge University Press. £30. Michael

In Caravaggio’s “St Matthew and the Angel” (1602), the Bible seems to arrive as a shock to those who wrote it. Matthew, bare-armed and dirty-toed, is a fisherman stranded on dry land. Everything about

Europe’s frozen northeast became a new sacred frontier of holy war, forced conversion and occupation against Europe’s last pagans

Adrian Tchaikovsky returns to the darkly exuberant world of The Tyrant Philosophers