In the Nancy Mitford novels there is a character called the Bolter. She is the narrator’s mother who lives in Kenya and parks her daughter on an unmarried aunt. She is always falling for unsuitable ...

On an autumn day in 1680, the 50-year-old Charles II charged Samuel Pepys with an unusual task. Over two three-hour sittings, one on a Sunday evening, the next the following Tuesday morning, the king ...

Does the monumental life of WH Auden justify yet another book? @FionaRSampson considers the latest effort. Fiona Sampson - Tell Me the Truth About Love Fiona Sampson: Tell Me the Truth About Love - ...

Ugwu is a teenager from a village in Nigeria who goes to work as a houseboy for a university lecturer, Odenigbo. His aunt tells him that if he works hard, he will eat well. ‘You will even eat meat ...

Does the monumental life of WH Auden justify yet another book? @FionaRSampson considers the latest effort. Fiona Sampson - Tell Me the Truth About Love Fiona Sampson: Tell Me the Truth About Love - ...

I’m not sure what stands out for you when you think of the late 1990s – DeLillo’s Underworld? The dot-com bubble? Titanic? – but for me it’s two things: working (somewhat reluctantly) in New Age ...

Sir John Lubbock was an exemplary Edwardian Liberal. Growing up under the influence of Charles Darwin, who lived in the same village as him, he had a scientific mind. A truly good man and a ...

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more. Does the monumental life of WH Auden justify yet another book? @FionaRSampson considers the latest effort.

With The Real Lolita, Sarah Weinman might be said to have invented a completely new genre: true-crime literary criticism, which is not to be confused with truly criminal literary criticism, which, of ...

Does the monumental life of WH Auden justify yet another book? @FionaRSampson considers the latest effort. Fiona Sampson - Tell Me the Truth About Love Fiona Sampson: Tell Me the Truth About Love - ...

Does the monumental life of WH Auden justify yet another book? @FionaRSampson considers the latest effort. Fiona Sampson - Tell Me the Truth About Love Fiona Sampson: Tell Me the Truth About Love - ...

Boris Pasternak put his signature on every page he wrote. His lyric poems, letters, memoirs brim with personal feeling. Even Dr Zhivago is as much autobiography as epic. By contrast his son Evgeny, ...