‘Skin is an incredible contradiction’: Derrick Santini’s portaits of British creatives – in pictures
Photography: the great and good of Britain’s cultural life
June 2022
Top 10s
Top 10 forests in fiction
Daphne du Maurier, Mervyn Peake and Angela Carter are among the authors enchanted by these shadowy borderlands of civilisation
January 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 political travel books
From Beryl Bainbridge in Milton Keynes to Salman Rushdie in Nicaragua, politics has driven many writers’ journeys
June 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 houseguests in fiction
Visits are great engines for storytelling – and from Jane Austen to Ali Smith, here are some of the best
November 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 modern Victorian novels
Narrative tricks minted in the 19th century are still working in contemporary fiction by authors from Margaret Atwood to Sarah Waters
May 2018
Top 10s
Carys Davies’ top 10 wilderness books
From Eric Newby’s bliss in the Hindu Kush to Paul Bowles’s Saharan horrors, the novelist shares her favourite visions of unfathomable territory
December 2016
2016 – a year of celebrating women writers
In a year that has seen landmark biographies, literary reinventions and the loss of some leading lights, here are six female authors whose work lives on
October 2016
Reading group
Webchat with Brendan King, Beryl Bainbridge's biographer - as it happened
Reading group
The Bottle Factory Outing's unsettling brilliance is short but barbed
Reading group
Reading group: Beryl Bainbridge's The Bottle Factory Outing is our October choice
Reading group
Reading group: which Beryl Bainbridge book should we read in October?
September 2016
Critical eye
Book reviews roundup: Beryl Bainbridge; All We Shall Know; The Wonder
Book of the day
Beryl Bainbridge: Love by All Sorts of Means by Brendan King review – the life and loves of a born fibber
August 2016
Book of the day
Beryl Bainbridge by Brendan King review – drink, sex and wonderful novels
This vivid biography details Bainbridge’s complicated private life, out of which emerged some of the greatest works in English fiction
March 2016
A brush with greatness
The night Beryl Bainbridge gave me some tough advice
Writer Charles Lambert recounts the night he met the award-winning author – and never forgot her frank advice
November 2014
Tips, links and suggestions
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
July 2014
Books blog
School reports on writers deliver very bad reviews
Alison Flood: Charlotte Brontë wrote 'indifferently', according to her teachers, and many another writer's gifts have been roundly trashed by their teachers
May 2014
Exhibition of Beryl Bainbridge's paintings shows surreal imagination
Novelist was passionate self-taught artist whose pictures include images of historical figures in incongruous settings
January 2014
Do you know your way around polar exploring in literature? - quiz
Ernest Shackleton reached the limit of his expedition to the south pole on 16 January 1909. Celebrate with a gruelling test on literature's coldest climes
February 2013
Robert McCrum on books
Are these the 50 most influential books by women?
As readers pointed out, my last list was rather skewed to a male-dominated tradition. Here is an alternative perspective
