In so many words
John Mullan on the uses of eloquence in Andrew O'Hagan's Be Near Me.
The perception of doors
James Fenton opens the Gates of Paradise.
Judge the book trade by its covers
Commentary: The artist Harland Miller praises the winning jackets of the inaugural Penguin Books Design award.
Still tricky
Peter Preston on Conrad Black's valiant attempt to rehabilitate a White House crook, Richard Milhous Nixon.
Sea power
The impressionists went to the Normandy coast to catch the effects of the light and the spray. William Feaver on the paintings that made waves.
An inspector calls
Prosper Mérimée is best known for the novella on which Bizet based Carmen. Yet his greatest achievement was to rescue France's architectural treasures from the vandalism of 19th-century developers. Julian Barnes celebrates an unusual polymath.
Now I remember, now I forget
Michael Hofmann is dismayed by the tone and content of Günter Grass's self-revelation in Peeling the Onion.
Peter Pan, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Bridget Jones… which books capture their era?
Few writers have summed up the spirit of their age in a single work. Here, our literary editor names those books that still speak volumes about the time in which they were written.
Afterthoughts
State of Denial | Big Babies | Le Tour | A Home From Home
Shelley: poet, predator and prey
An exhilarating new life traces the 'angelic' movement of the Romantic's mind. But mere mortals paid dearly for his unearthliness says Hilary Spurling.
The examined life
Catherine Taylor, Caroline McGinn and Craig Taylor on Guilty | Lilian's Story | The Anthology of New Writing, vol 15 | The End of Innocence | Goodnight Irene
Cabinets of curiosity
Do pots have to have a purpose and be cheap enough to drop? Edmund de Waal's formidably ambitious work challenges the philosophy of potting as functionalist, ruralist and local, to turn ceramics into art. By Fiona MacCarthy.
‘Great souled’
Lives & letters: As his autobiography makes clear, Mahatma Gandhi was too concerned with sex, diet and politics to be the otherworldly saint many took him to be. Pankaj Mishra on a classic of the confessional genre.
Flying the flag
Although very different in size and scope, the Aldeburgh festival (now in its 60th year) and the Proms continue to make a vital contribution to the cultural health of the nation, argues departing Proms director Nicholas Kenyon.
‘Have I the strength to kill her?’
The Gibbons twins spoke their own language, hated each other, took up arson and wound up in Broadmoor. Perfect stuff for opera, says librettist April de Angelis.