My life with Shere Hite: the forgotten feminist who changed sex for ever

When her books about women, men and the clitoris caused outrage, the bestselling writer was forced to flee the US. She ended up in my small ex-council flat in London – her head still full of revolution

My month in rehab: alcohol was killing me – until I made that crucial call

The crime author Cate Quinn thought she was entering rehab to tackle a nascent drink problem spurred by a family tragedy. The truth? She had never experienced adult life sober

‘A shop can be your castle’: the surprising rewards of retail work

Working in retail can be dispiriting, but when the author Madeleine Gray took a job in a bookshop in her native Australia, she learned more about human kindness than she ever thought possible

Shelf-absorbed: eight ways to arrange your bookshelves – and what they say about you

Whether you alphabetise your books, hoard them or make sure your most intellectual tomes are in sight for Zoom calls, these displays reveal a lot ...

‘His success was rammed down my throat’: Charlie Chaplin’s son Michael on fame, failure and finding peace

He was the son of the most famous man in the world, a runaway hippy, a failed pop singer and then a goat farmer. Now, Michael J Chaplin is publishing the novel it took him decades to write

Women’s sex lives were a mystery to men. Then along came Shere Hite

A new documentary celebrates the life of the feminist pioneer who shocked the world – and about time too

Blood: The Science, Medicine and Mythology of Menstruation by Dr Jen Gunter – why periods are ‘a muddled burden’

The outspoken Canadian gynaecologist’s compelling scientific study cuts through misinformation, myth and worse with clarity and wit in this study of the menstrual cycle

Sunday with Alice Roberts: ‘I’ve trained my children to bring me tea in bed’

The TV presenter on a lie-in, pancakes in pyjamas, and a long walk involving an archeological feature

Candace Bushnell: ‘I dated a 21-year-old and a 91-year-old in the same week’

The Sex and the City writer, 65, talks about her rebellious youth, Studio 54, million-dollar contracts and getting married and divorced

My father told me to always give a book 50 pages before deciding to put it down. It’s a good rule of thumb for life, too

Adele Dumont’s father wasn’t the type to give advice but his recommendation about reading can be extended to giving everything a fair chance

We should cherish handwriting: the scribbled, the scrawled, the stubbornly jotted

Our communications lose character when we give up putting pen to paper. It’s hard to imagine an Auden poem celebrating the arrival of the night email

I thought my great-aunt was just a gentle oddball – then I discovered her secret role in the Austrian resistance

I always believed that my family had survived the Holocaust almost unscathed. But it turned out my great-aunt Malci had defied the Nazis - with tragic consequences

‘I want some light in my life’: eight writers make their new year reading resolutions

Finding fun, getting lost in an epic and taking a first peek at science fiction ... Sathnam Sanghera, Elif Shafak, Sarah Waters and more make their reading resolutions for 2024

Many of us have been raised with unrelenting standards. We need radical acceptance

Assuming we are all doing the best we can might free us up to feel gentler, kinder and more compassionate to ourselves – and others

KM Peyton obituary

Author whose Flambards books drew on her love of horses and captured the changes brought by the first world war