Shakespearean is an adjective that might well be applied to this beautifully structured play ...

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten. I thought I should start today with Thoroughly Modern Millie, who claims to be, at 79, one of the oldest bloggers on the web. (Just out of interest does anyone know of any older female blogger?) The post …

Can I step back and point out the actual scale of yesterday's London bombings?

"Superfluous daughters" in early modern Italy were, with varying degrees of force, pushed into nunneries

"One of my favourite anecdotes is the story of Richard Nixon flattering Mobutu in 1970 ..."

I went to North Korea in 1998 and it was, and no doubt still is, a most fascinating, if spooky, place.

Vegans and sadomasochism: Amy ponders whether the two go together...

Literary types like to dismiss genre fiction, yet judging by the number of novels that are near- (or far-)misses, a detective novel is as difficult to write well as any other.

... the approach of any pre-Raphaelite should make you run as fast as your crinoline would let you.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten. I had been planning after the first ten weeks to start including bloggers who’d made the list before, but the excitement of collecting 100 women bloggers has gone to my head, and I’ve decided now to go for …