To mark the 400th anniversary of his birth, UNESCO has declared Evliya Çelebi a ‘man of the year’. His Seyahatname, or Book of Travels, is one of the world’s great works of literature. Caroline Finkel celebrates a figure little known in the West.
An erotic poem written by Frederick the Great has been discovered in Berlin. Is the Prussian king describing a liaison he had with the Italian philosopher Francesco Algarotti?
Chris Corin ressurects the life of a Soviet survivor whose remarkable and significant career deserves to be better known.
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was first published in London by Thomas Egerton on October 30th, 1811.
The American abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on 14 June 1811.
The Aeneid, Virgil’s epic Latin poem, offers as profound an insight into the current Libyan crisis as any 24-hour news channel, argues Robert Zaretsky.
Janina Ramirez, presenter of a new BBC documentary on Iceland and its literature, explores the country’s sagas, their wide-ranging legacy and what they tell us about the history and culture of the Arctic island and its peoples.
Though it is immersed in the theological ideas of the Middle Ages, the cosmology of Dante’s Divine Comedy is sophisticated, sceptical and tolerant, argues James Burge.
The Spectator was first published on March 1st, 1711.
On a research trip to Moscow in the late 1990s, Deborah Kaple was given a package of papers by a former Gulag official who believed its contents would be of great interest to a western audience.
