There some amazing literature published for children and young adults - literature that can and should be read by people of all ages - but besides it being entertaining, moving, disturbing, and educational to read, it is also fascinating to study and discuss.

No lover of Shakespeare - on page or on stage - will fail to recognise the wordplay or pun on the proper names of Shakespeare's characters.

Who wanted to be Lizzie Bennet? Not me, aged 10, that's for sure. I wanted to be elder sister Jane, who was beautiful and good. She thought the best of everyone, even when Miss Bingley was being a total cow. Even then, I felt dimly, this was going to be beyond me, and therefore something to aspire to.

Hilary Mantel has won this year's Costa Book Award for her novel Bring Up The Bodies which the judges described as "head and shoulders" above the othe...

We in the UK are often told that GCSE's are too easy and that standards are slipping. Quoted in the Daily Mail, the nerve centre of decent, honest rep...

Earlier this month, Elizabeth Day wrote an article for The Observer about reading stories aloud. She made the interesting point that audiobook downloa...

In his willingness to admit his errors when he does make them lies perhaps the greatest secret to Holmes's continued success.

This is poetry to entertain the everyman enthusiast and win over the cynics. If any contemporary collection is going to convince the disbeliever that poetry can be a riot of cheek, giggles, boobs, tears and facebook - while keeping it's artistic integrity firmly intact - Mondeo Man is it.

There are so many wonderful American poets who have not achieved the fame (or notoriety) sufficient to carry their names or poems across the pond. Here are five such diamonds in the rough, selected for their energy, tenacity, and all-around fine work, that are worth keeping an eye on in the coming year.

Despite the apocalyptic prophecies of the literary world's grand old sage Philip Roth, who in 2010 said that the novel faces a future of denigration and dismissal by the masses, the novel continues to go from strength to strength, remaining steadfast as a source of much pleasure for society.

Le Grand Meaulnes is a novel best read by a man of youth and innocence, as it would be impossible for those who have become immune to life's tragedies, where the rawness of that first lost love has faded into the mists of time, to ever resonate quite so deeply and fall under its spell in such a tremendous way.