At the turn of the (last) century, the world was changing rapidly. Trains were faster, cheaper and more comfortable than ever before. The new craze of bicycling had given men and women unprecedented i
Fat seemed to be getting fatter under Queen Victoria: Tweedledum and Tweedledee; Joe "the fat boy" in The Pickwick Papers; even the first known report of childhood obesity in 1859. But for the short,
The gripping and elegiac stories of eight lost books, and the mysterious circumstances behind their disappearances.They exist as a rumour or a fading memory. They vanished from history leaving scarcel
A book of boxing by one of the nineteenth-century stars, celebrating the 175th anniversary of The London Library.Ned Donnelly, a former prize fighter turned boxing instructor and author (with a lot of
A celebration of the greatest kind of shop in the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Michael Dirda, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann. A cabinet of curiosities, a time machi
While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor's jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an
A vibrant fable of marriage, caste and social convention from one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Indian fiction'Unexpected and moving' Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana'A major
It was not easy to be a sportswoman at the end of the nineteenth century. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, said in 1896: "No matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her org
The 19th-century boom in mass tourism, fuelled by the introduction of the railways, brought with it the rise of travel writing. Guided excursions such as "Cook's Tours" (the first of which was led by
Writers in Translation, established in 2005 and supported by Bloomberg and Arts Council England, champions the best literature from around the world. To mark the programme's tenth anniversary, ten lea
In the early hours of the morning, a woman is found in the elevator of a plush apartment block on Santa Fe Road, Buenos Aires. She's young, gorgeous and dead. With this opening image starts one of the
'I tend my herd and flock by day so I have to read into the night; I cannot put it down' Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows I Want to find out how they behave when they're free Len Howa
Brilliant neo-noir from one of the greatest post-war writers of GermanA respected professor is dead - shot in a crowded Zurich restaurant, in front of dozens of witnesses. The murderer calmly turned h
