Lyrical Bryson given guard of UK heritage

Bill Bryson, the laureate of the Blackpool landlady, the slightly damp mattress, and the ominous stain on the bedroom ceiling, was yesterday appointed watchman over all such treasures.

Telling tales

AN Wilson's prurient portrait, Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her, adds little to our understanding, says Galen Strawson

The queen of Coole

Brenda Maddox welcomes Lady Gregory's Toothbrush, Colm Tóibín's revisionist portrait of a great patron of the Irish arts

The magus

John Banville applauds a biography of Isaac Newton that doesn't neglect his study of alchemy

My granny was a book thief

They were hidden in cupboards, drawers and crannies - 300 books stolen from the public library. But why did she take them? And could she really read tea leaves? John Sutherland remembers.

A war to call my own

James Astill follows a journalist's quest to connect with Africa in The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley

The pain is not the point

Simon Callow welcomes an opportunity to revisit the best of Kenneth Tynan's work in Dominic Shellard's life of the critic

The last emperor

The final Mughal ruler of Delhi was a mystic, poet and calligrapher. But the art of his reign would have been lost but for an eccentric Briton. William Dalrymple reports

Sense, not sensibility

Andrew Motion welcomes Ian McIntyre's rehabilitation of Joshua Reynolds, an artist tarnished by the Romantics