How literature works

“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

“A deluge of printed matter pours over the world”, F. R. Leavis proclaimed in his doctoral thesis of 1924. An excess of low-quality verbiage, in the view of this young literary scholar, was doing harm

Harriet Green was horrified to find she’d forgotten how to lose herself in a good book, so she vowed to re-establish a reading habit. Here’s how she did it — and you can, too

There’s no telling what will make a nonfiction bestseller. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the late Erich von Däniken’s junk archaeology about “ancient astronauts” both seem implausible

Which childhood book sparked your love of reading? The Shoe Shop Bears by Margaret J Baker, now sadly out of print. It was the first book I bought with my own money. I was bored by picture books and w

A biography is a daunting task for any writer. How can you summarise a life? Can you realistically cover all of the source material? If the subject is well known, there are probably rival biographies.