Be prepared
Essential advice for students planning a gap year from the book Before You Go by Tom Griffiths.
Ripping yarns
Special needs teacher Paul Blum found his pupils just weren't interested in their reading books . . . so he helped them to produce their own. Angela Neustatter reports
Orwell’s dirty secret
What happens when biographers discover something loathsome about their subject? DJ Taylor on the ugly side of a radical hero.
A bully with some beef
Corrupt, callous, cruel and crude, Lyndon Johnson used his dark arts to advance light and liberty with a series of liberal reforms. Robert A Caro continues his magisterial life of LBJ with the third volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Master of the nine-and-a-bit-bar blues
Robert Gordon's Can't Be Satisfied tells the story of Muddy Waters, the Mississippi bluesman whose influence stretches from the Stones to Moby
Double murders with a literary twist
Blake Morrison on accounts from Simon Worrall and Gail Bell of a forger and a medicine salesman whose expertise led to their downfall
£20m to save minority languages
Lisbet Rausing, heir of Britain's richest family, has given £20m to fund a research project run from London to record languages around the world that are at risk of extinction.
Fellow of the world
Wole Soyinka tells John Crace how western academics cosily acquiesce to injustice
Historian signs £3m media deal
The cult of the celebrity academic has been confirmed with the revelation of a multimedia deal worth £3m for TV historian Simon Schama. By Matt Wells.
Rimbaud, without the brains
Mark Ford on Clive Fisher's account of the brief and brawling life of the poet Hart Crane
The stronger vessel
Emmeline Pankhurst fought for women's suffrage with indomitable courage. Michael Foot explains why Jane Purvis's new biography is "a full recognition of her greatness"