Francisco Umbral
Obituary: Celebrated and controversial Spanish writer whose columns attacked the famous.
Sprechen Sie Potter? How Harry is spreading the English language
· Overseas readers can't wait for a translation· Final book in boy wizard's saga smashes UK records
Move over Tolstoy: detective tales of Tsarist era take Russia by storm
Author who spotted a gap in the market sells millions of novels to country's emerging middle class.
Style over substance
Alex Stein: Novelists like Martin Amis should be wary of using a verbose and unclear literary style when writing explicitly political material.
The unsung hero behind Spider-Man
Stan Lee is celebrated as the creator of Spider-Man. But artist Steve Ditko had just as much input into the comic-book superhero. So why do we never hear about him? Jonathan Ross tracks down a reclusive genius.
‘You’ve gotta think, think BIG’
Robert Draper was granted extraordinary access when he was writing his book about US president George Bush. And the details he reveals - such as the strict routines and obsessive exercise - are now the talk of Washington. Ed Pilkington meets the author.
Why Casanova had to be a woman
The great seducer has been reinvented - as a caring, sharing woman who gives everyone their heart's desire. Lyn Gardner reports.
Germany’s mythic titans
Hywel Williams: It is a brave novelist who attempts to convey how Wagnerian intensity led to Nazi catastrophe.
Why failure is the new face of success
It may have been the military that invaded but, with Iraq completely dismantled, the reconstruction was to be the preserve of US corporations ... Thus was born 'disaster capitalism', where oil companies profit from a broken country and private security firms grow rich on political chaos, says Naomi Klein in this final extract from her new book.
Backing the bombers
Michael White: Martin Amis asks today why so many 'liberal relativists' take Osama bin Laden's side. It's not such a bad question.
A 2,500-year-old sex ban
Aristophanes' Lysistrata was about the power of women in a time of war. Blake Morrison felt an update was overdue.
Bayreuth: an everyday tale of fascist folk
In the sinister soap opera starring Adolf Hitler and Winifred Wagner, it can be hard to tell truth from fiction, says Paul Levy. Happily we now have both in AN Wilson's novel Winnie and Wolf and Jonathan Carr's biography The Wagner Clan.