literature

At 80, SF author M John Harrison is producing some of his best work. He talks about finding his voice, alien intelligence and the advice from Iain Banks that still spurs him on Three years ago, in a greasy spoon on the fringes of the City of London, M John Harrison – Mike to his friends – told me about the novel he was working on. Rather than describing its plot or characters, he spoke purely abo…

Food is more than something we eat. It carries memories, traditions, comfort, and connection. This week’s Heart List celebrates five artists who use food as their subject, transforming ordinary meals, seafood spreads, fried eggs, and ice cream cakes into captivating works of art filled with color, storytelling, and emotion. The post 5 food paintings we’re savouring on our Heart List this week app…

Books have shaped human history for centuries. They have preserved religious teachings, recorded scientific discoveries, inspired works of… The post 10 Artworks Inspired by the Love of Reading appeared first on Arts To Hearts Project .

From local book clubs to group sessions with authors, what’s driving people back to wood pulp and ink? I have a few ideas The accident took place without warning during a holiday. The culprit: an Airbnb bedside table with no power outlet. A minor inconvenience forcing a mobile phone on its last gasp of ions into another room for the night. While lying on the bed desperately trying to stem the ter…

Literary magazine will no longer engage in ‘external publishing partnerships’ after Commonwealth prize furore The prominent literary magazine Granta will no longer publish the winning entries of the annual Commonwealth short story prize after one of this year’s winners drew widespread accusations of AI use. The magazine said it would no longer be involved in “external publishing partnerships” in …

In this week’s newsletter: The last time they were a British screen staple was the mid-90s. Once a genuine cultural phenomenon, the Wombles could be successfully resurrected – or derided as woke At the height of Womble-mania in the mid-70s, Elisabeth Beresford, creator of the snout-nosed, litter-collecting sensations, laid down three strict ground rules for anyone appearing in costume as her char…

Andy Serkis has picked the perfect actor for the next iteration of the Lord of the Rings franchise. But if Tolkien didn’t linger over this subplot, should we? Let’s be honest: Anya Taylor-Joy would make a great elf. If any human being could flit from tree to tree as if woven from gossamer and starlight, or appear on a moonlit branch looking as though she had just been summoned by a haunted lute,…

Comedian Patton Oswalt steers readers to Studio City’s farmers market for tamales and strong coffee, then to North Hollywood’s Last Bookstore and Cahuenga’s cozy, cat-filled Iliad for long, screen-free reading sessions.

Tilda Swinton makes her audiobook debut with this landmark study of how New York artists from Edward Hopper to Andy Warhol have lived with loneliness It is a decade since Olivia Laing published The Lonely City , a blend of memoir and cultural analysis on the isolation of urban living. Laing – who is non-binary – had moved to Manhattan following a love affair that ended abruptly. Once there, they …

In an industry dominated by men, many women dedicate themselves to the craft of editing – as well as managing directors’ egos – to create some of the most celebrated and memorable big-screen classics Behind every great director, to coin a phrase, is a great editor – and as the tributes paid earlier this month to the late Marcia Lucas, Oscar-winning editor of Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI, and form…

The best book recommendations often come from artists themselves. We asked five artists to share the books that have inspired, challenged, and stayed with them over the years. From creativity classics and artist memoirs to books on observation, mastery, and resilience, these recommendations offer insight into the ideas that continue to shape creative lives. Whether you're an artist or simply some…

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! The GWC has barely had time to unpack its suitcase and already the goals are flying in like overenthusiastic airline baggage. Stadiums are full, scoreboards are busy and, most importantly, football’s three marquee attractions decided that now would be a good time to remind everyone why they dominate highlight reels, sponsorship campaigns and soc…

In his directorial debut Maddie’s Secret, Early plays a food influencer with bulimia in a wild flip on the modern melodrama They don’t make film heroines quite like Maddie Ralph any more. As the creation of comedian and actor John Early , the titular character of Maddie’s Secret is a bright-eyed ingenue who greets the day like the sun came out just for her, no matter that she’s trudging to her jo…

A second helping of the English-language adaptation of Mercedes Ron’s trilogy sustains little chemistry between its supposedly besotted lead characters Here is Amazon Prime’s sequel to its hit My Fault: London. If you’re new to the franchise back-story, it started with a bestselling trilogy of romance novels by Spanish author Mercedes Ron (who self-published the first one). It’s a tale of the for…

Abstract This book offers an interdisciplinary reexamination of Homer's Iliad, using a multilevel conceptual schema that bridges literature, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and natural science (pp. 5, 10). Moving past traditional historical, philological, or purely social interpretations, the author treats the text as a poetic exploration of the male soul and a manifestation of universal, diachroni…

In the latest autofictional instalment of his family saga, the French writer makes sense of his sibling’s violent homophobia and short life At 33, the French writer Édouard Louis has already seen all seven of his slim novels translated into English. In his breakout debut, The End of Eddy (2017), and again in Change (2024), he wrote about being the promising child of a poor family, the bullied gay…

The idea that a telluric, ideological center between two apparently irreconcilable spaces must serve as a pretext, at least, to generate, or propose, another kind of dynamic, one purer, less political perhaps, or closer to the mystical account, true radicalism, much more useful to the production of the artist than the world of the academy, the world of the letter, which entirely lacks the capacit…

Litter-picking creatures emerge from underground for global franchise targeting nostalgic adults and gen Alpha Move over Paddington Bear. After almost 30 years off screen, the Wombles – the furry, litter-picking creatures who live beneath Wimbledon Common – are set for a comeback. The characters, whose motto is “Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish”, are being revived after the consolidation of the brand…

When Rivers received a surprise letter from DeLillo, it encouraged him to set the author’s one-act play in an adult-free, postapocalyptic world Nine-year-old girls reciting the gnomic prose of Don DeLillo – it sounds like an extreme English detention, but for film-maker Ben Rivers this was the foundation of his new movie, and the culmination of an unlikely friendship with the literary titan. DeLi…

Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger is the first novel from the Nobel laureate since 2021’s Klara and the Sun and draws on the author’s love of music, art and Golden Age cinema A new novel by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is set to be published in March next year. Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger, announced by his UK publisher Faber, is a spy caper. Set in 1938, the novel follows Richard Hadley as h…