Mary Beard: ‘Virgil was a radical rap artist of the first century BC’
The classics professor and author on being inspired by Mary Douglas and terrified by Beatrix PotterMy earliest reading memoryWhen I was about four, my mother read me Beatrix Potter’s The Story of a...
View ArticleGetting over a breakup? Critics pick music, books, games and more to help
Heartbreak is the ailment, could culture be the cure? Our critics’ suggestions to help ease your pain – or channel your angstThe best method for getting through a breakup is watching Marc Webb’s movie...
View ArticleWant horror for Halloween? Critics pick music, books, games and more to help
From a creepy Hollywood comedy to trick or treat for gamers, Guardian critics suggest their cultural classicsForget slasher films – the essential Halloween movie is Frank Capra’s 1944 comedy Arsenic...
View ArticleGeorge Orwell: how romantic walks with girlfriends inspired Nineteen Eighty-Four
Details from 50 newly released letters echo scenes between Winston and Julia in the dystopian novelThe feeling of longing for a lost love can be powerful, and George Orwell makes full use of it in his...
View ArticleTop 10 books about the Roman empire | Greg Woolf
From Edward Gibbon to Asterix the Gaul, the astonishing endurance of the largest state Europe has ever known continues to inspire a compelling literatureThe Roman empire’s USP has always been its...
View ArticleTop 10 books about self-improvement | Anna Katharina Schaffner
In time for new year resolutions, a cultural historian chooses some of the best guides to making a better life, dating back to some of our earliest literatureIt is easy to dismiss self-help books and...
View ArticleTop 10 novels inspired by Greek myths | Susan Stokes-Chapman
From James Joyce to Ali Smith and Chigozie Obioma, the archetypal stories of the ancients have inspired some of our best fictionWhen we think of Greek myths we think of vengeful gods, legendary heroes,...
View ArticleForget Wordle! Can you crack the Dickens Code? An IT worker from California...
The writer’s archaic shorthand has baffled experts for over a century. So they launched a deciphering competition for fans – with stunning results that cast new light on his love life and financial...
View ArticlePandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman review – myth in Georgian London
A young woman living above an antiquarian shop comes across an ancient vase in this vivid debutCreated by Hephaestus and released into the world of men to bring both misery and hope, Pandora is a...
View ArticleFive of the best books about Russia and Ukraine
As Russia wages war, the historian Orlando Figes offers a guide to the literature that illuminates the tensions and the myths of the regionRussia and Ukraine share much of their history. At times they...
View ArticleA classicist at Glastonbury: ‘Headbanging in raincoats? It’s as English as...
Our chief culture writer is a Glyndebourne veteran, but has never been to the world’s biggest music festival – so what did she make of the spectacle, the songs and the hedonism?It’s a cliche you...
View Article‘First modern novel – oldest language’: Sanskrit translation of Don Quixote...
Translated by two Kashmiri pandits from an C18th English translation in the 1930s, unique work lay forgotten in a Harvard University libraryThere is an adjective that all too invitingly describes the...
View ArticlePeter Mackridge obituary
Pioneer of Modern Greek studies in British universities fascinated by questions of language and identityWhen Peter Mackridge, who has died aged 76 of cancer, embarked on his academic career, “Greece”...
View ArticleFlash of genius: how a Cornish lighthouse inspired Virginia Woolf’s fictional...
St Ives holiday home that planted the seed for English writer’s modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse has now earned a historic plaqueFor the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary...
View ArticleIf looks could kill: how Medusa became a potent political meme
From Christine Blasey Ford to Amber Heard, Medusa has become the default allegory for a hated woman in the public eye, but those who fear her lethal gaze would do well to revisit the myth“Ancient...
View ArticleJoyce Reynolds obituary
Classicist and academic who transformed our understanding of Roman imperial historyJoyce Reynolds, who has died aged 103, was an honorary fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, a classicist specialising...
View ArticlePhilologist Irene Vallejo: ‘Alexander the Great’s library was the first step...
The Spanish writer on how Papyrus, her bestselling history of literature in the ancient world, changed her life at a difficult moment, and why it’s a mistake to undervalue booksBorn in 1979, Irene...
View Article‘It was exciting to create these beastly, huge, grotesque women’: the authors...
With its heroic female leads and men who long to be fathers, Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett’s new book looks at modern mores through an ancient lens“She is coming!” cried Thesea, and she ran...
View ArticleTop 10 books about tycoons
From rapacious businessmen to political power brokers, this literature extends from biographies of Cornelius Vanderbilt and Tiny Rowland to novels by Scott Fitzgerald and Preti TanejaTycoons, and their...
View ArticleAncient texts shed new light on mysterious whale behaviour that ‘captured...
An unusual feeding technique only recently observed by scientists was documented nearly 2,000 years ago, a study suggestsFollow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesGet our morning and...
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