Growing up on cartoons that soaked up psychedelia as blotting paper soaked up LSD

Children’s author and illustrator provoked controversy with his erotic drawings in 60s and 70s

From Dolores O’Riordan and Myrtle Allen to Stephen Hawking and Aretha Franklin

From Hunter S Thompson to Philip Roth, Shirley Jackson and John Connolly, great writing has a way of making readers feel less isolated in a world of anxiety and upheaval

Colm Tóibín pays tribute to great author who was a ferocious critic of Donald Trump but a close friend of Edna O’Brien

Prolific author of works such as Portnoy’s Complaint and The Human Stain won almost every major literary prize

The great American writer on Trump, the #MeToo movement and living the retirement life

When nuclear war loomed in the 1960s, Cork was deemed the safest place to be

Politics: There are actually a number of dark futures to which our system can succumb

Sadly this Colm Tóibín-assisted effort has none of the warmth of his best work

Nina Raine should know. Her father, a critic, once told her: `Your business is not to be worrying about people’s feelings. Because otherwise you will never write'

The bestselling writer on autobiography, being part of a literary power couple with Jonathan Safran Foer, and what happens when it all falls apart

His works have been adapted by Rob Reiner, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick and David Cronenberg. And we’re soon to see more adaptations on screen

Michael Inside, Maze and Song of Granite are among the strong field of new Irish film

Joyce, Binchy and O’Brien show ‘a link between lapsed Catholics and philo-semitism’

Chris Johns: The UK needs a cross-party coalition to negotiate a softer, slower Brexit

‘Dummy’, ‘idiots’, ‘morons’: basic words, but the way the president uses them resonates

Scottish poet’s foray into post-second World War US history is disappointingly contrived

Barack Obama talks to New York Times chief book critic about role of literature and writing in his life, from helping him work out his own identity to connecting with people

Not since Lincoln has there been a president so fundamentally shaped by reading and writing as Barack Obama