Filthy Chaucer
A Tayle of Two Chaucers; or, How Examynation Boardes Are Using Sexe to Sell Theyr Syllabuses.
The original loony Left
Despite the most noble intentions, the Left Book Club was a deplorable idea
Situation abnormal
Was the suicide of Guy Debord a revolutionary act? Andrew Hussey, researching a book on the leader of the French Situationists, is drawn into a clash of egos and conflicting ideas.
Bunkered by Mr Big
It's a sport that Scotland gave to the world but the explosion of its corporate version is devastating the landscape. Poet John Burnside attacks the unacceptable face of golf culture
We’re all doomed!
From stormy seas to urine-stained deathbeds: Jonathan Jones ponders the changing symbols of melancholy.
Stranger than fiction
It's not just novels that play with form and convention. Julian Loose looks at the revolutions in non-fiction writing
The wings of desire
Stephen Moss finds out what makes the twitchers tick in Mark Cocker's insider report of an obsession that is no longer restricted to the thermos and hide, Birders: Tales of a Tribe
A rag of quality
Vera Rule on Morris Brownell's The Prime Minister of Taste, an account of that "trifler" and gossip supreme, Horace Walpole
Dear diary
Robert Hewison learns about art through a collection of artists' confessions, anxieties and frustrations in Art, Not Chance: Nine Artists' Diaries
Gwen Raverat by Frances Spalding
In this extract from the authorised biography of Gwen Raverat, Frances Spalding draws on a huge cache of unpublished papers to bring us a life lived with bravery, humour, realism and integrity, surrounded by a remarkable cast of relatives, friends and associates.
Murder incorporated
From the ruins of Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya produces a damning indictment of Vladimir Putin, A Dirty War
My 15 minutes with Andy
When Mary Woronov was a student, she was taken on a trip to Warhol's Factory studio. She had no idea that she would find herself in one of the artist's Screen Tests.
Checks in the post
The chancellor's lot is not easy, finds Roy Hattersley in Second Amongst Equals by Richard Holt
Daddy, I hardly knew you
Phil Daoust admires a tragicomic autobiography of abandonment in Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Perfect poise
Richard Shone on a compelling artist's tale in Gwen John: A Life by Sue Roe