Joanna Briscoe: Mr A, my unattainable love god

At 17, Joanna Briscoe developed an all-consuming crush on her Robert Redford-lookalike English teacher and dreamed of it all ending in true love. Thirty years on – and now a mother – she is relieved it didn't work out that way

Culture Flash: exam results

Exam time and student angst have always been a rich source of creative inspiration, writes Stuart Heritage

Reading the riot acts: why wasn’t Waterstone’s looted?

Nikesh Shukla: Are books just for the middle class? As society puzzles over its divisions, perhaps the publishing industry should follow suit

John G Rule obituary

Social historian of life and labour in Georgian and Victorian Britain

Miller Mair obituary

Clinical psychologist who fought against 1950s orthodoxy

Macmillan ordered to pay $17m for corruption in South Sudan

Macmillan Publishers has been ordered to pay $17m and banned from World Bank tenders for at least three years for paying officials to win an education deal in South Sudan

Popular teacher Miss Rusty’s book charts her story

Stop Don't Read This tells the story of her dismissal from Calder High and the aftermath as well as the fictional account that led to the chain of events

But Mr Darcy, shouldn’t we be taking precautions?

Catherine Bennett: Damning romantic fiction for failing to educate its readers is both patronising and nonsensical

Once Upon A Life: Arabella Weir

Sent to a new school at the age of 11, writer Arabella Weir quickly became top of the class – in winding up the teachers. But could her wise-cracking career survive the challenge of taking O-levels?

Teachers use hip-hop to teach poetry

When your teacher is a performance poet, English lessons can have a different accent

AC Grayling has caricatured British universities. No wonder they’re fuming

Simon Jenkins: The New College of Humanities founder has exposed higher education as a luxury consumable for the middle classes

AC Grayling’s private university is odious

Terry Eagleton: The money-grubbing dons signing up at the £18k a year New College of the Humanities are the thin edge of an ugly wedge

Richard Dawkins heads lineup at private £18,000-a-year university

Niall Ferguson and Steven Pinker also join AC Grayling's initiative but critics complain of greater inequality in education

Everyone’s talking about Ayn Rand

A film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, a BBC documentary and the support of rightwing economists have put the philosopher-novelist back in the news