Once upon a time

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

THE LIBRARY OF TRAUMATIC MEMORY Tragic moments ★ ...

THE MARK OF A GREAT, TOUGH BOOK MAY NOT be how many literature classes it’s taught in but how many film or TV adaptations you can drape on its branches without breaking them. Dramatizations are tricky

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

“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?

I don’t live at home with my three younger siblings anymore. I have my own flat which is shoe-box-sized, but mine, and I can read there whenever I like. I’ve always been a reader, ever since my mum sh