The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath is an essential yet strangely discomforting volume. It includes writing so apparently far removed from the work for which Plath is remembered – her late poems and her autofictional novel The Bell Jar – that it almost seems to undermine her canonical status. In reality, of course, it does no such thing... read more

Among medieval heroes, El Cid has proved the most durable. There is no doubt that he, unlike King Arthur, existed; it is certain that he gained control of Muslim Valencia at the end of the eleventh century. Nor is there any doubt that he was a member of the Castilian lesser nobility and had a wife named Jimena... read more

Wolfgang Münchau has, for more than thirty years, been one of the most acute and penetrating commentators on the European Union, writing in the Financial Times, the New Statesman and elsewhere. What I mean to say by that, of course, is that I have often found him supporting my own views and prejudices in language rather more persuasive... read more

In May 1966, an aggrieved John le Carré wrote to the editor of the Soviet newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta in response to a critical review. Noting that his books were at that point unavailable in the Soviet Union, he set out his stall for the benefit of (sadly imaginary) Russian readers: ‘I have equated, in hypothetical terms, the conduct of East and West... read more

While Shakespeare seems to maintain the status of perennial contemporary, Milton does not enjoy quite the same standing. The knotty theological wrangling and offensively strict gender hierarchies of Paradise Lost, not to mention the obtrusive and rebarbative personality of its author, make it an ever-harder sell... read more

It’s said that Oxford was spared destruction on the scale of Coventry because Adolf Hitler wanted the place as his capital after he conquered England. Ashley Jackson’s engrossing new book describes how the city of dreaming spires woke up to the realities of the Second World War. His trawl through the archives has yielded a rich and glittering haul, containing much... read more