Books & Lit
Paperback review: Chasing Venus - The Race to Measure the Heaves, By Andrea Wulf
There were two races to record and observe the transit of Venus across the Sun in the 18th century - in 1761 and 1769 - and both show, as Wulf points out in her pacy yet informative account, "a century in which science was worshipped". Worshipped so much
Review: The Book of My Lives, By Aleksandar Hemon
'I was 27 (and a half) and Sarajevo belonged to me," Aleksandar Hemon says of the city he left in 1992, just before Serbian forces began the siege that lasted nearly four years. Hemon was as unprepared for catastrophe as any other young man who'd spent hi
Picture book review: My Brother's Book, By Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak, America's foremost children's illustrator, died last year at the age of 83. Sickly and frequently bedridden when young, he later described his Brooklyn childhood as "that terrible time". Subject to the detested attentions of various visiti
'I was set up as a hate figure': Hilary Mantel defends criticism of Kate Middleton
Award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel has defended her comments about Kate Middleton saying she has: "absolutely nothing to apologise for".My Brother's Book by Maurice Sendak: review
Maurice Sendak's final posthumous tale is at heart a moral fable for adults.
World Book Club: Romesh Gunesekera - Reef
Harriett Gilbert talks to Romesh Gunesekera about his book Reef.
The Last Girlfriend on Earth by Simon Rich - review
The precocious American humourist strikes gold again with 30 short stories mocking the idiocies of men How can you not be a bit envious of Simon Rich? A former editor of the Harvard Lampoon , he was Saturday Night Live 's second youngest ever scriptw
My Secret Life: Shirley Hughes, 85, author and illustrator
My parents were… My dad was TJ Hughes, who owned a department store of the same name in Liverpool; my mum met him when he was serving in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War.
Open Book: Instructions for a Heatwave; obesity in the contemporary novel
Mariella Frostrup talks to Maggie O'Farrell about her novel Instructions for a Heatwave.