‘My spelling isn’t that great’: Michael Morpurgo on why teaching kids to love writing is more important than grammar

The author, poet and playwright on why we should move away from Michael Gove-mandated lessons on fronted adverbials and back to unleashing the creative potential of children

Want to make art? You better be rich: how Australian culture locked out the working class

Wages are low, work insecure and funding has been gutted. Amid a cost-of-living crisis and a pandemic, are we about to lose a swathe of artists to obscurity?

What are the lessons of history and why don’t we learn them?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Ann Buchanan obituary

Academic and social worker who was less interested in theories than in practical solutions

Percy Allum obituary

Academic whose bold analysis of Neapolitan politics and the Camorra sent shock waves through the city

Children’s book on the Queen’s jubilee given cold shoulder by schools in Wales and Scotland

Details released of tale about Queen’s 70-year reign, which is felt to be too ‘Anglocentric’ by devolved governments

Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper – review

A penetrating analysis of the connections that enabled an incestuous university network to dominate Westminster and give birth to Brexit is perceptive and full of surprises

The School That Escaped the Nazis by Deborah Cadbury – review

The story of a co-educational boarding school that was spirited from Hitler’s Germany to the Kent countryside is structurally flawed but emotionally compelling

Stolen Darwin journals returned to Cambridge University library

Seminal works left in pink gift bag with ‘happy Easter’ note for librarian after going missing in 2001

‘Out of touch’: children’s authors describe increasing censorship of books on diversity

Fear of backlash means stories about race, sexuality and neurodiversity increasingly deemed inappropriate for young readers

Sir John Elliott obituary

Historian of imperial Spain known for his vivid biography of a 17th-century statesman, the count-duke of Olivares

Museum visits do not improve GCSE results, study reveals

Report finds no correlation between better exam grades and exposure to ‘middle-class’ outings

Catholic church bans visit by gay author to London school

Simon James Green had been due to appear at John Fisher boys’ school in Purley, but the archdiocese of Southwark said the event could not be permitted

Dillibe Onyeama, whose memoir of racist abuse at Eton shook the establishment

Onyeama became the first black person to complete his studies at the prestigious school, and a 1972 book, which Eton tried to quash, detailed the daily racist abuse he suffered

Forget Wordle! Can you crack the Dickens Code? An IT worker from California just did

The writer’s archaic shorthand has baffled experts for over a century. So they launched a deciphering competition for fans – with stunning results that cast new light on his love life and financial peril