Michael Frayn and Blake Morrison help son of Christopher Wordsworth in attempt to unravel whether depression might have led Observer writer to kill

After writing books about his father and his mother, Blake Morrison swore he didn’t have another memoir in him. Then his younger sister died, and he couldn’t escape the urge to tell her story

Blake Morrison on boomers, Chris Power on Gen X, Megan Nolan on millennials and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé on Gen Z … which books shaped your generation?

How an unlikely Casanova and blacklisted clergyman conned his way around the world

Following the route, decades later, of an anti-Thatcher march, a journalist asks what became of the country his father struggled to change

A great iconoclast has written a polemic about ageing that sends up New Age platitudes and is full of scepticism of the wellness industry

An organic farmer identifies empathy, happiness and eccentricity in her cattle. Despite the seeming naivety of her narrative voice, she is well aware of what she’s up to

Blake Morrison transposes a corrupt, covetous 18th-century Paris to 1920s Yorkshire in a lively satire directed by and starring Barrie Rutter

From Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney, the author selects his favourites from a tradition where the most interesting characters are very often absent

This 20th-century epic, Auster’s first novel in seven years, sees one hero lead four lives

Dylan’s Nobel prize win sparked a debate about lyrics as literature. Here, Andrew Motion, Carol Ann Duffy, Johnny Marr, Naomi Alderman and others nominate songwriters whose verse has the power of poetry

Not many novelists have managed to write well about these unglamorous but subtle dramas. From George Eliot to John Updike, here are some who have