Seventy years ago, Israel declared independence, and the Manchester Guardian sent the leftwing intellectual to cover the nascent state. But was he an altogether accurate witness?
From BF Skinner’s behaviourism to Milan Kundera’s existential comedy, these are some boldly counterintuitive guides to the part of ourselves we know least
From Macbeth to Robert Maxwell and Mussolini’s son-in-law, the investigative reporter and crime novelist picks his favourite books featuring ‘plot No 2 in literature’
This week the New York Review of Books’ blog revealed that a literary manuscript assumed to be among those lost for ever has reappeared, but what of the others?
Nick Fraser: The Act of Killing has won over critics but this tasteless film teaches us nothing and merely indulges the unrepentant butchers of Indonesia
While France celebrates its intelligentsia, you have to go back to Orwell and Huxley to find British intellectuals at the heart of national public debate. Why did we stop caring about ideas? When did 'braininess' become a laughing matter?
'The grammatical fiction of personal guilt prompted another toothache, in the course of which Rubashov recalled how he had betrayed his mistress and librarian'
Left Bank by Agnès Poirier – existentialism, jazz and the miracle of Paris in the 1940s