A bag of books

Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

Fantasy author JRR Tolkien’s mythological Middle Earth takes inspiration from a number of places in Gloucestershire and the West Midlands. Tolkien frequently visited the Forest of Dean and its tempera

This month’s story, ‘A School Story’ by M.R. James, is a ghost story within a frame narrative. It offers a number of interesting features, and, as always, you will get the most out of this masterclass

The imagined gardens within the pages of our favourite books can seem as real as the flower beds outside our door. Here, author Sandra Lawrence explores three evocative literary landscapes

We tend to imagine our literary icons in ivory towers – poised, thoughtful, wrapped in something muted and cashmere, tapping away at sleek laptops. Perhaps it’s how you picture yourself when attemptin

It’s the cosy season of sitting down with a good book. Here, authors heading for Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival this month share their writing styles