The cult of Mary Beard
The long read: How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most beloved intellectual
Ovid’s exile to the remotest margins of the Roman empire revoked
Rome city council overturns banishment of ‘one of the greatest poets’ more than 2,000 years after Augustus forced him to leave
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 96 – Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne (1624)
The poet’s intense meditation on the meaning of life and death is a dazzling work that contains some of his most memorable writing
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 95 – Areopagitica by John Milton (1644)
Today Milton is remembered as a great poet. But this fiery attack on censorship and call for a free press reveals a brilliant English radical
Politicians v the people: what our leaders could learn from Coriolanus
Shakespeare plucked an obscure Roman general from Plutarch and made him a principled but uncompromising hero. As the RSC brings the play back, its brutal statement on class divide and conviction politics has never hit harder
RSC plans celebration of Shakespeare’s favourite classical poet
Company aims to reignite interest in Ovid, whose book the Metamorphoses is alluded to in some of the Bard’s plays
Mahabharata epic set to become India’s most expensive movie ever
Randamoozham, starring veteran actor Mohanlal, will cost Rs 1,000-crore (£120m) and is to be funded by UAE-based billionaire BR Shetty
Literature isn’t a luxury but a life-changer
Sharing literature with those who wouldn’t otherwise come into contact with it is a joy
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin review – beyond spooky
A sympathetic biography argues for a feminist reappraisal of a tortured genius of American gothic
Mary Beard v Arron Banks: ‘Your vision of the EU is like mine of Rome – a dream’
The TV historian and the Ukip donor were recently at Twitter war about immigration in the Roman empire. So what happened when they actually went for lunch together?
Ditching classics at A-level is little short of a tragedy
Classics underpins much of the modern world; the AQA exam board’s decision to end A-levels in classical civilisation, archaeology and history of art is lamentable
‘The most impure tale ever written’: how The 120 Days of Sodom became a ‘classic’
It was once reviled as one of the most sexually violent books ever written and banned in Britain in the 1950s – and now it is a Penguin Classic. So why has the Marquis de Sade’s novel been reclassified as great literature?
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 23 – The Elements of Style by William Strunk and EB White (1959)
Dorothy Parker and Stephen King have both urged aspiring writers towards this crisp guide to the English language where brevity is key
Was Jane Austen a feminist? The answer is in her stories
I updated Pride and Prejudice to show that for women today marriage is no longer the only version of ‘happily ever after’
Crime, social climbing, shotgun weddings: meet the Shakespeares
A pregnant bride, a father who lived in fear of arrest, a son-in-law charged with ‘carnal copulation’: Shakespeare’s own family was just as wild and wicked as his creations. Illustration: Matthew Richardsonby Simon Callow