Thursday 20th November 2025

Books

The lying life of authors: John le Carré and authorial double-lives

“I’m not a spy who writes novels, I am a writer who briefly worked in the secret world.” This was said by the famous author John le Carré, who...

The caring individual: John le Carré at the Weston

At the back of the Weston Library, in a small room off to one...

Why we’re obsessed with Greek myth retellings

In every bookshop today, from Blackwell’s to Waterstones, an unmistakable pattern emerges: Greek myth...

Plaques and Peripheries: The Search for Oxford’s Women Writers

Every morning on my way to college, I pass through the cobblestoned, crowded St...

Iris Murdoch’s Oxford Life

Benn Sheridan reflects on Iris Murdoch's life and work in the final instalment of Through the Looking Glass

Love in a Renault Clio

Susannah Goldsbrough outlines Nancy Mitford’s tragic wit

Is it wrong for a dictionary to offend me?

Laura Wilsmore questions the OED’s newly-added definition of ‘Essex girl’

On the incompleteness of reading

Ellie Duncan gets lost in the countless possibilities of translation

Graham Greene and Oxford’s pubs

Daniel Curtis loses himself in tales of writerly pub trips in the penultimate Through the Looking Glass

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