John Donne, priest and poet, part 1: love, conscience and martyrdom | Roz Kaveney
John Donne thought too much - about love and death and his rejection of the choices of his family to rise up the church's ranksLike many of us, he thought too much about everything.It was always the complaint against John Donne's love poetry, during th...
The battle of the book reviews | Lionel Shriver
Professional critics are no more reliable than Amazon ratings, a study shows. So do we really need them?Is the professional book reviewer an anachronism? In a recent Harvard Business School study of nonfiction reviews, assessments in mainstream media o...
How our fight for Kensal Rise library has drawn a community together | Marika Giles Samson
By fighting our library's closure, we've shown how communities can work together and achieve extraordinary thingsThey arrived at 7:30am on Wednesday, with trucks and security guards, to clear out Kensal Rise library – as they had five other libraries...
So, you think reason guides your politics? Think again | Simon Jenkins
I thought I could see tribal bigotry at 100 paces and fell it with a Socratic blow, but I was deluding myself – and so are youAre you for growth or austerity? Do you sympathise with the Greeks, or regard them as getting what they deserve? If you disa...
Texas’s war on history | Katherine Stewart
Christian-nationalist zealots are trying to rewrite US history, airbrush slavery and enshrine creationism in Texas schoolsDon McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a "young earth" creationist. He believes the ear...
Texas’s war on history | Katherine Stewart
Christian-nationalist zealots are trying to rewrite US history, airbrush slavery and enshrine creationism in Texas schoolsDon McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a "young earth" creationist. He believes the ear...
In defence of self-help books | Alain de Botton
The ancient philosophers recognised we all need help navigating our lives – so what explains self-help books' decline in prestige?Anyone wanting to damage their intellectual credentials at a stroke need only do one simple thing: confess they read sel...
In defence of self-help books | Alain de Botton
The ancient philosophers recognised we all need help navigating our lives – so what explains self-help books' decline in prestige?Anyone wanting to damage their intellectual credentials at a stroke need only do one simple thing: confess they read sel...
Alain de Botton: let’s talk about sex – live Q&A
Join Alain de Botton at 12pm to debate sex, love, desire and the dilemmas of modern sexualityAs part of a series of self-help volumes he edited, Alain de Botton has written a self-help book about sex – he wrote for us about the concept of "self-help"...
The Second Sexism is just victim-envy | Suzanne Moore
It is perfectly possible to understand that many men are suffering at the moment without blaming it on feminismAre men the new women? Are they having a harder time than silly moaning ladies? Has feminism gone too far? Has political correctness been put...
Michael Gove’s Bibles: good for schools? | Poll
This week, copies of the King James Bible were sent out to every state school in the country, courtesy of the education secretary Michael Gove. They were paid for by donations, not from the public purse. Tell us if you think the scheme is a good idea ...
Afghanistan has poetry in its soul | Reza Mohammadi