The Guardian - Culture: Books

The Book of Birds is a twist on classic field guides from the creators of bestseller The Lost Words

The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, an illustrated guide to Bri...

A fictional British author in Paris sets out to explore Stein through the lens of her own friendships, in this inventive, perfectly paced portrait

It is late 2024, and an unnamed British author living in Paris is trying to write an essay on Gertrude Stein, the modernist writer and art collector. The author has been distracted by her friend Eva’s cat, who is lost and who...

The writer and editor shares memories of a creative powerhouse who was generous with her time and expertise

Bonnie Greer, writer and cultural commentator, dies aged 77

Bonnie Greer person...

What is it that makes books so magical? The Times columnist somehow forgets to tell us in this lofty polemic

While other kids watched cartoons, Times columnist James Marriott would spend his school holidays in bed with piles of books – “a mammoth effort of attention, perhaps the greatest I ever made” – under the spell of his father, a teacher who inculcated in him a lit...

A bereavement memoir mingles with speculative fiction, in a wise and ragged examination of grief from the author of The Power

In his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Ludwig Wittgenstein alludes to an incident that followed the death of Franz Schubert. He recalls that Schubert’s brother cut several scores into small pieces, each consisting of only a few bars of music, a...