Oxford hopefuls canvas for poetic licence
Mainstream candidates favourites for professorship.
Blame Chaucer
David Hughes thinks he's found the source of the modern media. He tracks down the guilty parties in The Hack's Tale
The name of the robes
Mick Brown's investigation of Tibetan Buddhism, The Dance of 17 Lives, reveals dark deeds and Machiavellian wranglings at the heart of an often idealised religion
The worst wing
Bob Woodward's inside story of the run-up to war in Iraq, Plan of Attack, shows the US capital to be one of the most dysfunctional places on earth, says Jonathan Freedland
Sugar and spice
Gretchen Gerzina's biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett shows how she placed her trust in fantasy and it paid off, says Natasha Walter
Words on wheels
Laura Smith looks at a scheme in Essex that has brought libraries to the traveller community - and is helping to dispel widely held stereotypes.
Megaton megalomaniac
Despite pulling some punches, Peter Goodchild's new biography presents a compelling portrait of Edward Teller, the Darth Vader figure behind the H bomb
Swerving Berlin
Henry Hardy's selection of Isaiah Berlin's early letters, Flourishing, brings alive the brilliant insights into people and places that made him such an influential figure in 20th-century politics and thought
British libraries could shut by 2020
Report urges cuts in backroom staff, more late-night opening, and treble spending on books to reverse falling membership and lending.
‘The computers have made my life happy’
Stroud Green library receives visitors you might not expect: busy young people, stressed-out parents and sharp-suited businesswomen.
When Einstein was left as sick as a parrot
An assistant's newly discovered diary casts fresh light on the final years of one of the 20th century's greatest scientists.