Graham Martin
Literary critic and cultural studies innovator.
Kant’s wild years
According to three new biographies, the celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant was not such a dry stick as has previously been thought.
Call this English lit?
When Mark Jones and Gerry Carlin showed their students video porn all hell broke loose. Here they explain why their coursework features hardcore sex alongside Burroughs, Blyton and Joyce.
Lord Bullock of Leafield
A prolific and public-spirited historian, he founded an Oxford college and defined the nature of tyranny and evil in the 20th century.
Off colour
Elaine Showalter on My Life in Orange, Tim Guest's memoir of a miserable childhood in the Bhagwan cult
Education mandarins given black mark for ‘institutional illiteracy’
A Department for Education and Skills' handbook on how to teach English has been criticised for its bad grammar and clumsy language.
Secret of historic code: it’s gibberish
Mystery of manuscript that foxed scholars for centuries is solved.
Wholly Roman empire
James Buchan enjoys Audrey Burl's Catullus, an imagined life of one of Rome's greatest poets
Love letters lost and found
A 12th-century nun's story still holds surprises, finds Stephen Romer, reading James Burge's Heloise and Abelard
This ill-fated queen
Mary Queen of Scots was ruled by her heart while her English cousin ruled with her head. True or false? In John Guy's My Heart Is My Own, Sarah Gristwood finds that bad luck rather than bad statesmanship led to Mary's downfall
Beware the natives and their norms
Speakers of English as an International Language must claim it for themselves, argues Jennifer Jenkins
What would a modern Mozart be like?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on January 27 1756, the last of seven children, five of whom died in infancy or early childhood.
There’ll never be another you
In her new book, Arlene Judith Klotzko says we're more than the sum of our genes