Literature

A new book for the new year is an old British custom, but an old book can be even better.

A viking mercenary who fought on three sides, who was Thorkell the Tall?

Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes by William M. Schniedewind asks what authorship meant to the hidden hands behind the Old Testament.

The ancient stones of churches are portals to the past. Each new generation becomes a custodian.

The often overlooked life of Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh’s unofficial poet laureate and Scotland’s voice.

One of Greek tragedy’s ‘big names’, Euripides survives largely in scraps and fragments. What can 78 new lines from Ino and Polyidus reveal?

Surrealism – as formulated in André Breton’s manifesto a century ago in October 1924 – is regarded as one of the First World War’s artistic legacies. What are the others?

Bard romance? Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare by Will Tosh sets the stage for the next wave of accessible queer histories.

For more than a thousand years BC and AD have bisected our understanding of time. Should we keep them?

The Literary and Philosophical Society was once ubiquitous, allowing minds to meet and views to collide. Their disappearance has left more questions than answers.