This Christmas, don’t give books to non-readers

For bibliophiles, it is tempting to buy books as presents to ‘fix’ people who don’t read – but this is snobbery of the worst kind

Christmas books to inform and inspire your work in universities

After a difficult year in higher education, the festive break is a time to reset and rethink. Here are four inspiring reads for your stocking

Big-nosed Jesus and God as a second-rate Santa: the worst Christian art

An upside-down apostle, a puff-cheeked baby Jesus, a sub-Santa God … our writer revels in Wonder Beyond Belief, a new book celebrating the glorious weirdness of revered Christian art

Daisy Pulls It Off: Pauline McLynn, Anna Shaffer and more on a spiffing school assembly

Denise Deegan had a West End hit with her parody of 1920s boarding-school novels. Now, Paulette Randall is staging an age-blind revival with a crack cast of actors. They share their teenage memories

Once upon a sexual assault … it’s not outrageous for fairytales to get a modern update

Sleeping Beauty’s roots lie in a story of rape – and when stories strongly shape children’s sense of gender role and agency then old tropes may need reimagining, says author Stephanie Merritt, author and former deputy literary editor of the Observer

Neil Gaiman leads authors demanding action to halt decline of school libraries

Open letter, also signed by Philip Pullman and Malorie Blackman, says falling provision risks consigning children to ‘a lifetime of low achievement’

The Guardian view on translation: an interpretative and creative act

Editorial: Translators bring with them their personalities and prejudices. So it matters that a woman has finally tackled the Odyssey

West Country witchcraft and the hanged women of urban Exeter

Why were so many women accused and then put to death in 16th and 17th century Devon?

John Burrow obituary

Other lives: Influential scholar of medieval English literature

Yes, we must decolonise: our teaching has to go beyond elite white men

There’s no need for outrage over changes to our English curriculum, writes Cambridge academic Priyamvada Gopal

Cambridge student accuses Telegraph of inciting hatred in books row

Lola Olufemi says she received online abuse after newspaper used her picture on its front page story about efforts to ‘decolonise’ English syllabus

How to use picture books to get your class talking about emotions

Helen Hanna and Stefan Kucharczyk offer advice on discussing sensitive issues with children using books by former children’s laureate Anthony Browne

Cambridge academics seek to ‘decolonise’ English syllabus

University condemns abuse directed at group of students who sought to broaden literature studies to include black authors

‘Have you seen the maggots yet?’ Lindsey Fitzharris on the gruesome history of surgery

Medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris is obsessed with mortality – and her new book examines the work of early surgeons, who operated on the dividing line between here and the hereafter

Want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness: are Beveridge’s five evils back?

It’s 75 years since the Beveridge report paved the way for the welfare state, and the UK is again plagued by the problems he aimed to eradicate – from insecure jobs to malnutrition