Harry Potter and the end of a pop-culture phenomenon
The release of the final film featuring the boy wizard is being treated as a momentous cultural event. But why was it all so wildly successful? And what did it really, deep down, all mean?I am reading Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter (Part 2), in ...
Oh Jilly Cooper, please don’t give up the sex
Novelist threatens to abandon the sex-near-horses genre to write a proper bookJilly Cooper says she now finds it "difficult" to write sex scenes, even though she used to bash them out with the joyous snuffling of a Laura-Ashley-yellow Labrador finding ...
Film-inspired holidays: The Costume Drama Trip
Jane Austen heroines never travel – but if you must leave your Georgian pile, go and take the waters in BathThe problem with the costume drama holiday is that, in the books that inspire them, no one really goes anywhere. In fact, a journey is usually...
Why we need celebrity autobiographies
If we can't hear the voices of celebrities such as Kerry Katona, we will hate them – because we won't understand them
The celebrity autobiography has a knife at its throat. HMV, which owns Waterstone's, has announced it will stock fewer celebrity confessions, partly because of books such as...