The original Lord Gnome
Blake Morrison enjoys Richard Ingrams's The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett, a lifelong radical who might even have inspired a 19th-century Private Eye.
A Norman Jeffares
Obituary: An outstanding Yeats scholar, the founder of the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature, the journal Ariel and the York Notes series, and a poet in his own right, A Norman Jeffares has died, aged 84.
Crazy like a fox
Emmanuel Carrère examines Philip K Dick in I Am Alive and You Are Dead. Michael Moorcock on one of science fiction's strangest sons.
A better class of journal
Kathryn Hughes is delighted by Edward Pearce's edition of Charles Greville's diaries.
Tabloids beat libraries for the facts that matter
Much of the British public goes to the source it trusts least - tabloid newspapers - for its most crucial everyday information on politics and society, according to a study. By John Ezard.
Naughty naughty!
Does Leigh Eduardo have anything new to say about famous mistresses, asks Frances Wilson.
Burton letters donated to Swansea
A private collection of diaries, letters and books belonging to the actor Richard Burton was today donated to Swansea University, which will house the collection in a special research centre across the bay from Burton's Port Talbot home.
‘The proliferation of bullshit has deep sources’
Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. Without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great.
The bullshit guy
Twenty years ago a Yale philosopher gave a little-noticed lecture on the improbable subject of bullshit. Now, republished as a 67-page pamphlet, it has become a publishing sensation and its author is being feted as a guru. How did that happen? Gary Younge finds out.
Tale of two skulls divides Germany
As a nation remembers Schiller, its literary giant, doubt is cast over whose remains are in his sarcophagus.
Keats’s keeper
Grant F Scott finally brings together Joseph Severn's complete letters and memoirs. Andrew Motion applauds a reappraisal of a friend in need.