Chaucer: The Poet in His World
Is a biography of Chaucer impossible?
Literature
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover (Quote)
How does the reader decide if a history book is worth their time?
The Enigma of Emily Brontë
Since the moment Emily Brontë died we have tried – and failed – to understand who she was.
The Medieval Invention of Fiction
What goes on in other people’s minds? The idea of writing about what we can never know – the interior lives of others – was born in the fertile hybrid culture of 12th-century England and made possible by the pursuit of romantic love.
Don’t Judge an Olympia Press Book by its Cover
A Parisian pornographer who modernised literature with Olympia Press, Maurice Girodias concealed counter-cultural classics behind deceptively drab covers.
The Best History Books 2017
From ancient Greece to the Second World War, from the papacy to the Antichrist, from Byzantium to China and the story of the Jewish people, historians select their favourite books of the past year.
Sarah Bernhardt, Divine Salomé
Wild yet chaste, impudent and ageless, Sarah Bernhardt was inescapably Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, ‘the most splendid creation’.
Death of Walt Whitman
American poet Walt Whitman died on March 26th, 1892 after completing his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, a year earlier.
Order from Chaos
Despite its popularity in France, the political memoir took a while to get going in Britain. It was Lord Clarendon’s epic attempt to make sense of the turbulent 17th century that slowly set the ball rolling.
Chaucer's Post-Truth World
If you believe the neologism 'post-truth' describes a new phenomenon, think again. Geoffrey Chaucer diagnosed the problem at the end of the 14th century.