CIA ex-boss: secretive spooks tolerated in UK more than in US
Michael Hayden talks at Hay festival about Edward Snowden and how Facebook, not government, is new privacy battleground
Christopher Hitchens and the Christian conversion that wasn’t
A new book suggesting that the author of God is not Great was halfway to Christianity follows a long tradition of appropriation
Northern noir finds a new detective hero in the dark heart of Yorkshire
Streets of Darkness is being compared to The Wire for its gritty take on Bradford. Writer AA Dhand tells how the city’s race riots in 2001 helped him create Sikh investigator Harry Virdee
How Cambridge spy Guy Burgess charmed the Observer’s man in Moscow
Secret files released by MI5 reveal how the Observer’s Russia correspondent formed an uneasy friendship with the British defector in 1958
Vote to leave EU would ‘condemn Britain to irrelevance’, say historians
Letter signed by more than 300 prominent historians says voters can ‘stiffen cohesion of our continent in a dangerous world’
Rio de Janeiro: Extreme City by Luiz Eduardo Soares – review
This political history of Rio reveals a city still in the grip of its violent past
East West Street by Philippe Sands review – putting genocide into words
A compelling memoir reveals the Jewish legal minds who sowed the seeds for human rights law at the Nuremberg trials
Mapping My Return – Salman Abu Sitta on the fate of the Palestinians
Vivid re-telling of the experience of the Nakba - a tragedy that did not end with Israel’s war of independence in 1948
Rio de Janeiro review – the dark side of Brazil’s ‘Marvellous City’
With Brazil in crisis and Rio about to host the Olympics, this is a timely book that gets behind the cliches, from Luiz Eduardo Soares whose own political career was recently destroyed
Eleventh-century Chinese letter – just 124 characters long – sells for $32m
Billionaire Wang Zhongjun bought Jushi Tie, thought to be the only surviving work by Song dynasty scholar Zeng Gong, in a Beijing auction
Books are back. Only the technodazzled thought they would go away
The hysterical cheerleaders of the e-book failed to account for human experience, and publishers blindly followed suit. But the novelty has worn off
Aarathi Prasad: ‘Indians hedge their bets’
Aarathi Prasad describes a push to integrate the modern ‘western’ approach with traditional systems in India such as ayurveda and yoga. But is this truly desirable?
The Handmaid’s Tale is coming to Hulu – with a white man at the helm
It’s great news that the feminist dystopian novel will be adapted into a TV series. But why tell progressive stories onscreen if we can’t learn from them?
Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East by Nicolas Pelham
Sectarianism is the hall-mark of the deadly collapse of the Arab nation-state, argues a thought-provoking new book. The Ottomans managed better.
Borrower returns library book 67 years late – but escapes $24,000 fine
Woman checked out Myths and Legends of Maoriland from Auckland library in 1948 and had been ‘meaning to return it for years’