Susannah Gibson’s new book is a biographical history of the women who formed and hosted some of the most famous London salons in the eighteenth century. Following work on this subject by Norma Clarke, ...

The late Derek Parfit imagined the following choice. We could carefully steward our planet’s bounties, investing in infrastructure and renewable energy while leaving resources for future generations.

In 1942 the real estate magnate and philanthropist Alfred Knight purchased a copy of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles in its second, expanded edition (1587). He was building a collection of rare books ...

and walk the city with multimillioned windows for eyes. Versions of the world and time are limned through screens over-pinging with messages. cats curled under fenceposts, the lampposts’ travelogues ...

It is December 25, 1975. Maria Gabriela Llansol writes in her diary of meditation, chickens, her dog, of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Daybreak and the journal kept by the religious historian Mircea Eliade, ...

The expression “Don’t get me wrong” is a good place to start – an ethical mandate as well as a critic’s dictum. In its efforts to enforce informality while insisting on the possibility of estrangement ...

440pp. Princeton University Press. £35 (US $39.95). Stephanie Sandler “The plot always thickens in winter / All roads lead right to it”, says a voice in Maria Stepanova’s book-length poem Holy Winter ...

Last Friday, after an exhausting week, I approached my bookshelves looking for a novel to relax with. This should be easier than it is. Although books are taking over the house – lining up in double ...

304pp. Seuil. €19.50. In the second section Liwa awakens into the undead community of Frère-Lachaise cemetery. He meets Prosper Milandou, a disillusioned middle-class HR manager, recently returned ...

The first shot of Umberto Eco: A library of the world, in black-and-white, is familiar. The camera follows Eco as he walks down a hallway lined with shelves, framed posters and two sliding metal ...

The Reformation scholar Patrick Collinson once noted that “no-one has dared write a biography of [Robert] Beale”. There were good reasons. Second-tier administrators rarely make exciting biographical ...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Sara Hudston to talk about how to write about our environment, who gets to write about it, why it is so crucial – and “horsey” books; and James ...