We are shaped by a lifetime of books read for pleasure, so what happens if we become skimmers? 1 August 2022 – Most scare stories around the book industry make fabulous headlines, but are best read as fiction. The...
Summer books features have become a staple of publishing – though their origins lie far back in the 19th century 1 June 2022 – Most of my family’s summer vacations were on the sea in Cape Cod, Massachusetts –...
The industrial world’s practice of placing children in classes of similar ages with an adult teacher is not the only way to learn – and it might not be the most effective. 1 February 2021 – Each year across the...
ABOVE: Raphael’s “School of Athens” (c1510) has Plato and his student, Aristotle, at its centre 5 April 2021 – “Hellas: A Lyrical Drama”, composed soon after the Greek war of independence broke out in 1821, is not generally considered one...
ABOVE: A man takes in the view from the Acropolis in Athens, pictured in 1923 In a sweeping history covering thousands of years, Bruce Clark combines academic rigour with a personal passion for Greece 18 November 2021 – When...
ABOVE: the landmark Tianjin Binhai New Area Library in Tianjin, northern China From printing press to internet, technology has driven the way we store the written word. But what are we at risk of losing? 12 December 2020 – Richard...
20 April 2017 – Mud-slinging by Donald Trump, as well as his supporters and critics, has not only affected political debate, it has created a vocabulary of insults that lexicographers are struggling to keep up with, as each...
17 March 2017 – Readers committed to physical books can give a sigh of relief, as new figures reveal that ebook sales are falling while sales of paper books are growing – and the shift is being driven by...
“That is the type of language up with which I shall not put” – Winston Churchill 26 October 2016 – Who can say what order should be used to list adjectives in English? Mark Forsyth, in “The Elements of...
16 September 2016 – In a study that shatters a cornerstone concept in linguistics, an analysis of nearly two-thirds of the world’s languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no...