According to a little note printed at the back of The Widow and the Parrot, Quentin Bell and his brother commissioned the piece from their Aunt Virginia for publication in the family newspaper the two ...

For a brief but intense period after the publication of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë was ‘the rage’ in the world of Victorian letters. Only such a phrase can describe the fascination she had for ...

The old-style publisher’s memoir, which reached its high-water mark between about 1920 and 1950, was a relatively staid affair. The publisher who wrote it – say, Evelyn Waugh’s father, Arthur, author ...

Although his literary works are by no means uniformly successful, Peter Ackroyd may safely be described as an author possessed of genius, and had he died before attaining middle age (like Bruce ...

This remarkable book is difficult to classify exactly. Ostensibly it is a study of the exploration of the polar regions, the history of which is rich enough in drama, suffering and pathos to fill a ...

Ian Kershaw enters a crowded field with To Hell and Back, the first instalment of a two-volume history of Europe’s horrendous 20th century. Anyone interested in the period already has a formidable ...