A delicate touch

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

RESIDENTS in a Cockermouth care home are about to publish their first poetry book. The collection of poems – written by residents of Hames Hall Residential Care Home – will be released in the summer.

It started as a plan to help her customers, but soon stationery shop owner Rebecca McMillan, 34, from Cheltenham, realised she’d hit on something far bigger than she could ever have realised…

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

Jo Marchant In Search of Now The science and mystery of the present moment 336pp. Canongate. £20. Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong Time’s Second Arrow Evolution, order, and a new law of nature 176p

“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