Ban imposed on overseas sale of John Gould’s landmark ornithological studies

Export bar on Gould’s Original Drawings, valued at £1.2m, will run until September to allow domestic institutions time to raise money for purchase

The Guardian view on The Anatomy of Melancholy: a timely masterpiece

Editorial: Burton’s 400-year-old work may be based in long-outmoded medical theories, but pulsates with wit, humanity and energy

Write to roam: why armchair travelling is back in fashion

Reissued tales of classic journeys are being snapped up as Britons long for escape while having to stay at home

‘You are the one spark in my life’: Laurie Lee’s loving letters to secret daughter

Newly discovered exchanges between the Cider with Rosie author and painter Yasmin David show their joy at finding one another

‘Brexit changed everything’: revisiting the case for Scottish independence

Seven years after the referendum, writers including Val McDermid and William Boyd capture the mood of their country, and ask what it would mean to leave the UK

Boris Johnson offered to pay for help writing Shakespeare biography, says scholar

Academic was asked to be available at short notice ‘when Johnson found space in his diary’, but turned the project down

Cambridge college bans swimming at literary skinny-dipping spot

Petition signed by 8,000 after King’s College takes ‘reluctant’ step on River Cam at Grantchester Meadows

AK Blakemore wins Desmond Elliott prize for ‘stunning’ debut novel

The Manningtree Witches takes the £10,000 first novel award for its ‘clever and unexpected’ story of a 17th-century Suffolk village’s moral panic

From Napoleon to Matt Hancock: a short history of the aide

Once a military helpmeet, now more of a sous-chef to the big cheese … the meaning of aide has changed down the years

Waterstones prize winner Elle McNicoll: ‘I never saw autistic girls in books’

The author was repeatedly told that no one wanted to read fun books with disabled heroes. Now she has won the £5,000 Waterstones children’s book prize for her debut, A Kind of Spark

Oliver Twist’s London spotlit in new exhibition and walking tour

Charles Dickens Museum opens new display, which will encourage visitors to follow in the author’s footsteps around the nearby sites that inspired the novel

‘Be not solitary, be not idle’: secrets of 400-year-old self-help book unlocked

Lauded for centuries but a puzzle for many readers, The Anatomy of Melancholy has at last been demystified

Ali Smith wins Orwell prize for novel taking in Covid-19 and Brexit

Summer, written at speed last year, takes political fiction award while Joshua Yaffa’s Between Two Fires takes matching nonfiction honour

Lost memoir paints revered philosopher John Locke as ‘vain, lazy and pompous’

Rediscovered papers thought to record the memories of a longstanding friend say the ‘father of liberalism’ plagiarised and lied about never reading Thomas Hobbes

Brexit porkies: the etymology of ‘sausage’, star of the latest trade row

As a correspondent, Boris Johnson cooked up stories about European food regulation; as the PM, he is battling to avoid a trade war over sausages