Forever Fifties

Stefan Kanfer shows how Lucille Ball was trapped by one TV show in his biography of the 50s icon, Ball of Fire

Museum aims to draw crowds with cartoon boy wonder aged 75

Tintin to star in exhibition sponsored by lifelong devotee.

The dead poet’s tale

Whodunnit? Jonathan Myerson is rapt in a Python's coils of explanation as to the writer's mysterious end in Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones et al

An insult to the brain

Was Dylan Thomas a hero or an over-rated alcoholic? On the 50th anniversary of the poet's death, Nicholas Wroe looks at a new biography by Andrew Lycett and two collections of writings, edited by Gilbert Bennett and David N Thomas

MI5 spied on future laureate Day Lewis

Records reveal surveillance of leftwing poets before war.

A cry of: waiter! And the fighting stopped

A new German book reveals fresh details about the day peace broke out.

Noreen Branson

Passionate political activist and historian of the left.

A book is for life

Ruaridh Nicoll: We should invest more in getting our children to read earlier.

Good man, loose tongue

Malcolm Rifkind believes that Robin Cook deserves his country's gratitude, but doubts he should have revealed intimate cabinet discussions in his memoir, Point of Departure

Dylan Thomas’s grandad was model of lust

Poet did not have to look far for illustration of hypocrisy.

The road to inspiration

Although he came from the 'Brideshead generation', Robert Byron's political instincts were sharp. William Dalrymple acclaims James Knox's biography of the man who wrote the greatest pre-war travel book