A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Government – Frank McNally on arks, parks, and literary escapism

River Dunce – Frank McNally on fake-bookshelf builders (and other transpontine types)

The English Patient review: Love and loss in the desert fires

From the archive: Eileen Battersby’s review of ‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje, originally published on September 12th, 1992

Why Michael Ondaatje’s ‘The English Patient’ deserved the Golden Man Booker

Special accolade celebrates 50th anniversary of the literary prize

Wheel of recurrence in Athens echoes Irish banking fiasco

Greece Letter: Country’s fifth largest bank is in copycat exercise of Anglo Irish debacle

Liz Nugent on getting published in the most difficult period ever for the industry

This week, to mark the end of our How to Write a Book series, we will have a daily Q&A with a debut author

Another Life: Why Ethna and I are confirmed islomaniacs

We’ve been people for whom, as Lawrence Durrell put it, ‘the mere knowledge that they are on an island fills them with an indescribable intoxication’

Joanna Hodgkin: Amateurs in Eden