Beak practice
John Mannion enjoys an insider's view of the staff room in Francis Gilbert's I'm a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here!
Petrarch – the poet who lost his head
Italian who defined the sonnet at centre of medieval whodunnit.
Michael Foot pledges Hazlitt library to trust
Michael Foot confirmed yesterday that the cream of his Hazlitt collection will pass to the Wordsworth Trust when he 'conks out'.
A robot to DIY for
Dylan Evans on a novel approach to scientific investigation in Steve Grand's Growing Up with Lucy
Seizure and rape of British women was newspaper fantasy
Fresh evidence suggests that British women shipwrecked off southern Africa in 1782 chose to marry into African tribes and were not abducted and raped as reported in the press at the time. By Rory Carroll.
Crime writing
Erwin James is moved by Mark Salzman's account of juvenile offenders finding a voice, True Notebooks
Khan of all he surveys
Sue Bradbury follows the story of the once and future ruler of the Mongols in John Man's Genghis Khan
Dun dreaming
Joan Didion's Where I Was From debunks Californian mythology, says Blake Morrison
Starting out with words that ‘glue’ language
An extract from the British Council Elton award winning Natural Grammar by Scott Thornbury
Blood and guts
Roundheads, Cavaliers and Cromwell’s legacy: Blair Worden assesses three studies of the English civil wars
I was not a lab rat
A new book has rekindled old rumours that renowned psychologist BF Skinner used his baby daughter in his experiments. Stop this rubbish about me and my dad, says Deborah Skinner Buzan.
New book reopens old arguments about slave raids on Europe
US scholar claims more than 1m people were captured by African pirates.
Audrey Hepburn – everybody’s dream girl
It is a complex heritage that we take from Audrey Hepburn: glamour with a hint of sadness. No wonder she still resonates strongly with modern women, writes Rachel Moseley.
All you need is status
What others think of us is a matter of life and death, writes Alain de Botton.
Connection revealed between erotic writers and artists
Britain's first "literary erogenous zone" is about to bring a new type of tourist to a quiet corner of the east Midlands, thanks to a £110,000 project to research the background of the artist and poet William Blake.