Games as a way of life; how Franco tried to cheat history; George Saunders’s new ghost story; Korean poets finding freedom; Dickensian women – and much more. The new issue of the TLS is out now: www.the-tls.com/issues/curr...

Why fertility rates are collapsing around the world

An anthology of sonnets past and present

What the reparations debate misses

The fraught relationship between taxation and democracy

The Arctic as a battleground for the superpowers

Twenty Questions with Katherine Rundell

A history of childbirth and a defence of the C-section

Jessica Mitford: English aristocrat to American activist

Inheriting Norman Lewis’s library

Vivid life in an iconic Greek tomb painting

Bar-room politics and rising resentment in 1930s Berlin

The forward march of British poetry

‘The trouble with bespoke morality is that it can be very tailored indeed.’ Kant and external law

Ghosts and protest in Ali Smith’s latest jeu d’esprit

Revealed: newly discovered photographs of Baudelaire’s muse

The thrill of marine archaeology

The state of British poetry; Baudelaire’s ‘Black Venus’ revealed; populations in crisis; a history of shipwrecks; Kant and external law – and much more. The new TLS is out now: www.the-tls.com/issues/curr...

My @thetls.bsky.social review of Anthony Gottlieb’s new biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein (behind a paywall) www.the-tls.com/philosophy/h...

Over the moon to have Deborah Levy making her début writing in @thetls.bsky.social with a rereading of Eugène Ionesco in the issue out now. A great way to end the year. See you in 2026 www.the-tls.com/literature-b...

Absent or present? Gothic or uncanny? Fantastic or fantastique? My @thetls.bsky.social review of Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle www.the-tls.com/literature/f...

A great way to kick off this year's French literature coverage in the @thetls.bsky.social: Marie Darrieussecq on the latest book by Emmanuel Carrère in the latest issue. www.the-tls.com/literature-b...

How does distraction inform your writing? ‘I don’t really distinguish between distraction and everyday life.’ Twenty Questions with Anne Serre

How the young Dylan Thomas repeatedly stole from others

What is the worst job you ever had? ‘Painting the underside of an asbestos roof in a heatwave while standing on a plank with no guard rails.’ Twenty Questions with Michael Rosen

Who has influenced your writing? ‘Everyone I am related to, by blood and marriage.’ Twenty Questions with Elizabeth McCracken

Conflicting ideas about the Celts

Contrasting biographical portraits of Jane Austen

Irritating professors for the ages

David Freyne’s third film asks what to make of our memories www.the-tls.com/arts/film/e...

The writers Dick Cavett interviewed – backstage and on air

Cixin Liu’s stories of wonderment and altered natural laws

A daughter’s view of John Cheever and his fiction

The social history of saturated shades

Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth

How Wayne Thiebaud rendered the stuff of life

We are all powerfully shaped by the films we have seen, especially, though not exclusively, at an impressionable age. I reviewed for @thetls.bsky.social a fascinating collection of personal responses to the impact of film.

Which piece of music have you listened to the most in your life? ‘The song “From Her To Eternity” by Nick Cave.’ Twenty Questions with Mariana Enriquez

An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner, with a commentary by Peter Swaab

Two hundred years of the Decembrist Revolt

Poem: ‘Snow’ by Andrew Motion

The tech revolution that manipulates the subatomic world www.the-tls.com/science-tec...

‘People have been discovering Britain in one way or another for an awfully long time’: a journey into a nation’s past

‘Beer, like everything else, stores cultural memory, economic structure, rituals, resistance, class tensions’

‘That death is part of life can be a platitude, but also a deep truth difficult to grasp without experiencing it first-hand’: a novelist records her father-in-law’s last weeks

‘These letters excel at telling us that Updike was a great writer – prodigious, famous, revered – but if we had only them to go by, we’d have no idea why’

Proofreading for idiots (@wmarybeard)

John Updike’s literary letters; Jane Austen at 250; irritating professors; Cixin Liu’s stories of wonderment; beer as object and metaphor; our annual Christmas quiz – and much more. The new TLS is out now: www.the-tls.com/issues/curr...

My name is Irina, I'm obsessed with colour, and I wrote about it for my column in this week's @thetls.bsky.social www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...

What does a writing day look like for you? ‘I write fiction on Wednesday and Sunday mornings between 1 March and 31 October (inclusive).’ Twenty Questions with Simon Okotie