Looking at the triumphs and turpitude of the modern world, the temptation is always to seek someone responsible. In 1900, succumbing to that temptation, Mark Twain pointed to the 15th-century German ...

The era of dollar dominance might be coming to an end. But if not the dollar, which currency will be the backbone of the global economic system? @HowardJDavies weighs up the alternatives. Howard ...

Twenty years ago I proposed to a publisher a book about parties in literature and history. I have always liked parties, largely because of their unscripted nature and air of imminent danger. Giving or ...

The era of dollar dominance might be coming to an end. But if not the dollar, which currency will be the backbone of the global economic system? @HowardJDavies weighs up the alternatives. Howard ...

When I think of the parish priests I know who are not remotely misogynistic, homophobic or paedophilic, feel faintly embarrassed by the short-sleeved missionaries of the past, minister tirelessly to ...

Lydia Davis taught herself Norwegian in order to read his books. Haruki Murakami translated him into Japanese. Karl Ove Knausgaard reveres him. Awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature an ...

What does it mean to be modern? The answer was largely determined rather early in the modern era by three thinkers who, as luck would have it, not only came from the same place and spoke the same ...

In 1843, two years before her death at the age of seventy-two, Cassandra Austen told her brother Charles that she had been ‘looking over & destroying some of my Papers’, but was keeping ‘a few letters ...

Convinced of her own brilliance, Gertrude Stein wished to be ‘as popular as Gilbert and Sullivan’ and laboured tirelessly to ensure that her celebrity would outlive her. @sophieolive examines the real ...

Convinced of her own brilliance, Gertrude Stein wished to be ‘as popular as Gilbert and Sullivan’ and laboured tirelessly to ensure that her celebrity would outlive her. @sophieolive examines the real ...

Convinced of her own brilliance, Gertrude Stein wished to be ‘as popular as Gilbert and Sullivan’ and laboured tirelessly to ensure that her celebrity would outlive her. @sophieolive examines the real ...

Convinced of her own brilliance, Gertrude Stein wished to be ‘as popular as Gilbert and Sullivan’ and laboured tirelessly to ensure that her celebrity would outlive her. @sophieolive examines the real ...