Freemasonry behind Auld Lang Syne arm-linking at new year, study reveals

Books and films censored under Franco still circulating in Spain

Dismay as UK’s first specialist black bookshop forced to close

Untrained blind student lands starring role in Netflix second world war epic

Bambi: cute, lovable, vulnerable ... or a dark parable of antisemitic terror?

Remembering Joan Didion: the journalist and author in her own words – video

Joan Didion, American journalist and author, dies at age 87

Alan Bennett dedicates Kipling poem A Dead Statesman to Boris Johnson

Roman Abramovich settles libel claim over Putin biography

Pinch of Nom narrowly beats Richard Osman to top Christmas book chart

Martha Wells continues run of female Hugo award winners

One of world’s smallest books sold at auction for £3,500

Eve Babitz, chronicler of 1960s and 70s Hollywood excess, dies aged 78

European roundup: Abraham double fuels revitalised Roma at Atalanta

A Christmas Carol’s lesser-known successor gets its moment in the spotlight

bell hooks, author and activist, dies aged 69

New Arabian Nights translation to strip away earlier versions’ racism and sexism

Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2021: Amanda Lohrey wins $80,000 fiction prize for The Labyrinth

‘Extremely rare’ photograph of the Rossettis taken by Lewis Carroll up for auction

Memoir by the late journalist Sarah Hughes to be published in March 2022

Anne Rice, author of Interview With the Vampire, dies aged 80

Inauguration poet Amanda Gorman ‘preserves the memory of a pandemic’ in new collection

Grace Nichols’ ‘pioneering voice’ wins her Queen’s gold medal for poetry

Mary, Queen of Scots ‘locked’ final letter using paper-folding, research finds

From road trip to catwalk: Jack Kerouac classic inspires Dior collection

New book celebrates the lost work of Shakespeare’s female editors

Library audio and ebook loans in 2021 reveal unexpected stars

Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah says ‘writing cannot be just about polemics’

Chris Cuomo’s upcoming book pulled by HarperCollins following dismissal by CNN

Malcolm X’s former prison cell becomes first of 1,000 planned ‘freedom libraries’

Feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate

Crowdfunding offers the UK’s independent booksellers a pandemic lifeline

Dictionary.com names allyship as word of the year for 2021

Julia Donaldson reveals tussle over opening couplet of Superworm

Colombian family win award for world’s best cookbook

Let him be: how McCartney saved roadie from arrest after Beatles final concert

US author to give away £10,000 prize cash over role of sponsor in opioid crisis

Antony Sher – a life in pictures

Is Superman Circumcised? wins oddest book title of the year award

Publishing powerhouse Louise Adler named director of Adelaide writers’ week

Julia and the Shark’s writers on their pandemic-driven book lauded by Waterstones

How an innocent Black man served time for the rape of author Alice Sebold

Debut novel by ‘Russian Proust’ to be published in English for the first time

Unmasked: the Penguin saves world from Covid in Danny DeVito’s Batman story

Marcus Rashford to publish children’s novel The Breakfast Club Adventures

Alice Sebold’s publisher pulls memoir after overturned rape conviction

Unmasked: the Joker saves world from Covid in Danny DeVito’s Batman story