Plus a celebration of the Barber’s Coin Collection in Birmingham

The "17th century death roulette bot" raises difficult questions about how we empathise with lives in the past—and reveals the way plague still shapes our modern view of disease

It's Britain's greatest gossip newsletter. So how did Popbitch become the highlight of thousands of Thursday afternoons—without getting sued out of existence?

Even admirers of Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy may find it hard to reach the end of the 900-page finale

Why do people cleave so strongly to one side or another of this bibliographical culture war?

The story of two cousins living in the Cotswolds is hilarious and humane—with a subtle political streak

Each year, Prospect partners with the Royal Society of Literature to award a fiction writer working in short stories. This year's winner Ursula Brunetti weaves a tale about an unlikely friendship

In a sense, Dolittle is a coup in that it is both silly and yet bizarrely joyless—dragon anus scene included

The writer and academic, who has died at the age of 90, brought European philosophy into an insular intellectual world

Conducting has long been the province of powerful men. But as the #MeToo movement comes to classical music, can an industry steeped in its ways change?