Library show for word rhyming with hunt
Entitled 26 Letters, the latest British Library exhibition sounds inoffensive to the point of blandness. But many visitors have quickly become hysterical with laughter, or just plain hysterical.
Maximum Bob
Mike Marqusee is relieved to find that the first volume of Bob Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles, is honest and heartfelt.
The cat off the mat
Anthony Thwaite enjoys A Working Life, Jeremy Treglown's biography of the novelist and celebrated man of letters, VS Pritchett.
Never forget
Peter Hain is moved by Hilda Bernstein's account of one family's battle against the apartheid machine, The World that Was Ours.
Don’t deride Derrida
Terry Eagleton: Academics are wrong to rubbish the philosopher.
Patrick Wormald
Obituary: Brilliant Anglo-Saxon historian whose major work set the emergence of English law in its full social and cultural perspective.
‘It looked like a poemy, girl’s diary’
Young critics had lots to say about the Guardian Children's Fiction prize shortlist. By Claire Armitstead.
Jacques Derrida
Obituary: Controversial French philosopher whose theory of deconstruction gave us new insights into the meaning of language and aesthetic values.
Make it short – the cab’s at the door
Jeremy Treglown takes his lead from the master of the short story in his biography of VS Pritchett.
Just William
Stephen Greenblatt and Richard Wilson combine erudition with speculation in two new biographies of Shakespeare, Will in the World and Secret Shakespeare. Only one keeps calling him Will...
They make things happen
Old-fashioned hero-worship is barely tenable in our egalitarian age, says Colin Burrow, but we still do our best to keep it up. Lucy Hughes-Hallett suggests why in Heroes.
Stephen, Will and Gary too
Do we really need a new biography of Shakespeare? We do if Stephen Greenblatt writes it. Gary Taylor salutes Will in the World.
A burnt-out case
The years spent writing The Life of Graham Greene wore Norman Sherry down. It shows all too clearly, says Miranda France.
Vain, waspish… and a consummate artist
Michael Coveney on John Coldstream's even-handed biography Dirk Bogarde.