Books

As the World Cup looms, rugby union is in flux. What remains constant is the beauty of many of its European homes

From the ancient Mediterranean through 1960s Ireland to modern-day Appalachia, reads that will transport you

Few writers have been able to distil the world’s most complex themes and turn them into absorbing fiction as well as Conrad

What I am discovering, in re-reading his novels, is the immense capacity not only of his mind, but of his humanity

Migrants from north Africa are trying to walk across the Alps. And many are dying in the attempt

A new book rediscovers the power and subtlety of Carel Fabritius, the forgotten master of the Dutch golden age

Serial liars, such as Boris Johnson, don’t want you to know what they’re up to. The late Harry G Frankfurt’s writing can help us call them out

No-one else wrote like the Czech author, a man who rejected our ‘foolish certainties’ and defined the European novel for the modern age

The death of the Czech-French novelist made me wonder if I exiled myself, just to get out of Ronald Reagan’s America

Whatever her outlet, the Spanish writer always derived immense pleasure from reactions to her work and never lost her gratitude

The author lives on in a Barcelona conference which asks what he would make of the upcoming Spanish election and Franco’s legacy

A new strain of writing, that engages with the mundane things of life, is more profound than it may first appear

When the head of France’s collaborating Vichy government appeared in court, he remained a mystery for many who were there

Ben Judah’s superb This Is Europe is a tour through the continent’s underbelly, giving voice to the exploited and marginalised

One night in 1989, the greatest gymnast in the world tried to escape from communist Romania

The High Court’s ruling on Maya Forstater is good news for everyone

If democracies continue to produce such dysfunctional leaders, the only beneficiaries will be authoritarian states with their repressive, brutal alternative

Marking the centenary of a book whose roots run far wider than just Dublin

The Soviet spy agency took its Cold War tactics from a Chinese military strategist who died in 500 BC. The same ideas are now being used against Ukraine

For all life threw at her, the writer never lost the last sliver of an innocence battered irreparably by events outside her control

One of Britain’s leading historians explains how the roots of the decision taken seven years ago were laid decades before that

An obsession with what the likes of Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega and Succession’s Shiv Roy read on screen

Europe is edging closer to nuclear war. How would we behave in the world that remained?

Too many books about the countryside are over-written and nostalgic. But Rebecca Smith’s brilliant new memoir gets it just right

Even when it comes to humankind’s favourite pastime - world domination - we can’t claim any clear victory over ants

Cleo Watson’s debut novel, Whips, is the latest in a long line of raunchy romps set in the world’s least erotic place – Westminster

The overriding atmosphere of Loti’s output is one of a lost innocence, a yearning nostalgia for a world before the corrupting influence of Europe

A small number of eye-wateringly expensive private schools are ruining Britain – and one stands out from the rest

Great writers give us more than just good stories to read, they help us define ourselves and our place in the world

An exile’s redemptive return to track four generations of family history in the “backyard of a country that still thinks it’s an empire”

Martin Amis once confided his belief that his literary legacy would not last long. It was one of the rare occasions that he was wrong

In an age of stultified self-censorship and blandness, we have lost an author who always ran towards gunfire