A plodding new biography paints the Prime Minister as a victim, and ducks any serious reckoning with his many flaws

During lockdown, piles of discarded books sprung up everywhere: outside houses, ranging along low walls, balanced precariously atop gate posts. Leafing through them set my imagination alight

A scintillating new biography should make many doubters reappraise the enigmatic French philosopher

Adventuring in Paris's catacombs and the sea caves of Norway

In an era obsessed with social mobility, Britain has somehow forgotten about the trade union titan who rose from 11-year-old orphan farm labourer to become a world-shaping statesman

Dutch historian Rutger Bregman's manifesto for optimism reads like a 400-page TED talk

Our talking heads live in homes—probably nice ones. Why all the weird Zoom backgrounds?

Or: Wednesdays, at a writers’ retreat

Reading a book—not listening to it—has become its own sort of status symbol

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

Should works of art be bought and sold like potatoes? Or are they, like the best presents, items on which no real price can be placed?

Even before the digital age, book-lovers were always prone to distraction