Atlas reveals how you are likely to die

New maps of mortality chart how geographical differences influence the main causes of death

Alan Bennett’s teenage musings rediscovered

Exeter College to publish undergraduate comments and jokes taken from college suggestion book

Andy Burnham: a barbarian

Andrew Brown: The culture secretary is proposing that libraries should abandon the rule of silence. What a cruel and futile plan

Can video games encourage reading?

Mary Richert: Authors and publishers are using video games to hook young readers. It's a smart move, but the proof is in the programming

Historian says Beatles were just capitalists, and not youth heroes

Cambridge University historian identifies rural revivalist Rolf Gardiner as true youth culture pioneer

Brideshead Revisited worked as 80s fantasy – today’s students may find it harder to swallow

Peter Bradshaw: The TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel struck a chord with paid-up members of the student grant generation. Hard up teens today will find it harder to relate

Death of the bookworm

Michael Rosen: Children are being taught to read at school – but not to love books' complexity and depth. It's a national disgrace

Let’s hear it for the autodidact

John Sutherland: Sean Connery's memoir is surprising, not least because the actor emerges from its thoughtful pages as self-taught: how inspiring

Michael Baxandall

Obituary: Influential art historian noted for his perspicacity and scholarly approach

Please put a sock in it – this is a library

Hephzibah Anderson: Once as essential to libraries as books themselves, silence is now as elusive as that stolen copy of Lord of the Flies

Losing one’s place at the British Library

There's nowhere to sit at the British Library, but don't blame the students, says John Sutherland

Sats: literally failing

Michael Rosen: The government is still wedded to Sats. Why, when the tests emphasise rote learning and cramp imaginations?

No school like home

Home education can be 'astonishingly efficient', says a new study. Jessica Shepherd meets the children who don't go to school

Of ivory towers and coups d’etat

David Shariatmadari: Ann Lambton, one of the world's great Iranologists, has died. What drew her to the subject, and what was her legacy?