Rose Tremain powerfully evokes Victorian London in her story of an abandoned orphan; Adam Phillips ponders the meaning of change; and Matthew Beaumont follows in the footsteps of literary city explorers

Conversation rather than conversion is vital in the consulting room – is that the same for politics?

Struggling to understand your relatives this bank holiday weekend? The novelist picks her favourite books, from Mansfield Park to Cold Comfort Farm

Adam Phillips’s diverse, probing essays on writers and writing are like ‘little gatherings of like minds’