Metamorphosis
Sometimes a life seems created for an artist after death. Michael Hofmann isn't sure what Nicholas Murray has contributed to our understanding with his biography of Kafka.
Oxford pays its debt to ancients in Pindaric song
At the closing Olympic ceremony in Athens on August 29, a British former Olympic fencer, Dame Mary Glen-Haig, will recite lines in a poetic form first heard there 2,500 years ago, composed by a modern-day Oxford academic.
A touch of Frankenstein
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov's vision of the future of robotics and the complications inherent in their interaction with humans, was a revolutionary book, but the film is outmoded, says Philip Ball.
Sufi Steve and the Peugeot dealer
James Buchan follows Ziauddin Sardar's quixotic quest to reclaim the soul of Islam in Desperately Seeking Paradise.
Rivers of crud
The destructive nostalgia of Michael Collins's The Likes of Us should have no place in modern Britain, says Mike Phillips.
The scrivener’s tale: how Chaucer’s sloppy copyist was unmasked after 600 years
Academic detective work leads to scribe from Surrey chided in poem for his errors.
Soyer sauce
Veronica Horwell savours the story of the Frenchman who taught the English to cook in The People's Chef: Alexis Soyer, a Life in Seven Courses by Ruth Brandon.
Any of his smells
Andrew Motion revisits the marriage of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath through Diane Middlebrook's Her Husband
Christopher Ricks: Someone’s gotta hold of his art
If Christopher Ricks is better known for his admiration of Bob Dylan than for his own work, it doesn't seem to bother him. The new Oxford professor of poetry has a certain style, finds Donald MacLeod.
Out of steppe with Anton
Rosamund Bartlett's Chekhov: Scenes From a Life concentrates on his travelling - and somehow manages to ignore his writing.
More power to the tower
These days, everyone is interested in buildings, so the Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture is timely and welcome.
Guard of honour
Edward Pearce on Simon Ball's The Guardsmen, a study of political lives in the 20th century.
The Liver bird
June Purvis celebrates Susan Pedersen's biography of the overlooked founder of 'new feminism', Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience
America’s founding yuppie
Jay Parini enjoys Benjamin Franklin: An American Life - Walter Isaacson's new biography of the writer, inventor, diplomat, wit and all-round bon vivant Benjamin Franklin.