During the pandemic moments have folded into each other and time has moved in an odd way. The Alarm Clock by Diego Rivera.
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Just because two events last a month does not mean they both last the same amount of time.
Douglas Stuart, author of the Booker prize-winning Shuggie Bain.
Clive Smith/Booker
The story of child poverty in 1980s Glasgow speaks to current concerns across the UK.
Netflix’s series The Haunting of Hill House was inspired by the book of the same name by Shirley Jackson.
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From ghosts and meddling staff to interesting decorating choices, the houses in these books make for great reading.
Kate Winslet in the 2015 film The Dressmaker. The film was based on the novel by Australian writer Rosalie Ham.
Screen Australia, Film Art Media, White Hot Productions
Literature funding has been cut brutally in recent years and writers’ incomes are disastrously low. Yet books shape our national identity, forming an often invisible bedrock for the wider economy.
John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo.
Courtesy pmexpressngr
Nigeria’s poet and playwright, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, died on October 13 aged 86
The Black Vampyre is an early literary example of an argument for emancipation of slaves.
Thomas Nast/Harper's Weekly/The Met
A tale of vampirism would have been shocking to readers at the time if was published, not because of its monsters, but its politics.
Sorrow and Song by Edmund Blair Leighton.
Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives
During the second world war, people found solace in the formulaic narratives of historical romances and during the pandemic they could once again provide readers comfort.
KERRY BROWN/NETFLIX
A new Netflix adaptation of Rebecca stars Lily James and Armie Hammer. The novel on which it is based, first published in 1938, explores domestic entrapment.
Lilly James as Rebecca in the new Netflix film.
KERRY BROWN/NETFLIX
Wild coastlines, rich folklore and a sense that it’s a place unto itself, at once England and not, has made Cornwall the ideal setting for Gothic tales.
In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ the protagonist remains youthful while a portrait of him ages.
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In Oscar Wilde’s novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ a painted portrait of the protagonist becomes ugly and twisted with age, much like Trump is represented as reflecting all of America’s evils.
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A new book contains much wisdom on the question of ageing and the search for meaning.
Hamlet and Ophelia by Agnes Pringle.
Chiswick Town Hall
You might think he’s the hero of his own story but the murder happy Hamlet is really an unconscionable brute.
Dani, The Haunting of Bly Manor’s Governess.
EIKE SCHROTER/NETFLIX
Be they ghosts or her mind playing tricks? The uncertainty is the draw of the 1898 classic The Turn of the Screw.
People have sought more security and safety in their reading.
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From reading more to re-reading safe favourites, there are early signs that the COVID-19 has influenced how and what we are reading.
Your country needs YOU to be a critical friend.
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From medieval thinkers to James Baldwin, loving one’s country has never meant you can’t be critical of it too.
A young Virginia Woolf photographed in 1902.
Wikimedia Commons
Written in 1929, this short, passionate book highlighting the silencing of women’s voices continues to shape our culture.
Envy is one of the seven deadly sins – the worst of them all, according to the ‘Canterbury Tales.’
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We’re supposed to suppress feelings of envy. But what if the kind spurred by school shutdowns, frontline work and cramped apartments are worth exploring – and acting upon?
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Grammar is a set of tools to make meaning rather than a set of rules to follow. The difference is in how we teach it.
Portrait of the writer Vernon Lee by John Singer Sargent.
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There are reasons many female writers chose to publish under male pseudonyms. Republishing their books under their female names denies them agency.
Zadie Smith’s debut White Teeth was part of a wave of interest in “multicultural writing” in the early 2000s.
ROLF VENNENBERND/EPA
Interest in Black British writing has grown and shrunk since the late 1940s. Is the current wave going to crash like those before it?