Scholarly squeeze
Tristram Hunt: Allowing undergraduates into the British Library's reading rooms has led to exclusion, not inclusion.
The real deal
Joanna Briscoe is snared by Kate Holden's glittering story of addiction and prostitution, In My Skin.
Unputdownable but unspeakable
Andrew Brown: Bad books sell better than good ones because so many people are semiliterate.
The master and his mistresses
Elizabeth Cowling offers a new perspective on the life of a genius with her edition of Roland Penrose's notebooks, Visiting Picasso, says Matt Collings.
Roundabouts and Roundheads
Diane Purkiss illuminates the English civil war through the human detail of her people’s history, says Kathryn Hughes.
Entangled with the Boston Strangler
Sebastian Junger's A Death in Belmont is a classic mystery unravelled by a gifted narrator, says Jay Parini.
Orcadian rhythms
Maggie Fergusson's insightful and compassionate biography of George Mackay Brown reveals the physical and mental difficulties that beset one Scotland's greatest lyric poets, says Kathleen Jamie.
JK Galbraith
Visionary economist who defined, and defied, the 'conventional wisdom'.
Walking with Freud
Frances Wilson admires Matthew von Unwerth's portrait in miniature of the father of analysis, Freud's Requiem.
Star young author admits ‘unconscious’ plagiarism
America's hottest young author claimed new distinction in the burgeoning field of literary plagiarism by admitting to 'unconscious' copying of substantial portions of her debut novel from two other novels.