The hugely popular film of The Lady in the Van, in which Alex Jennings played the writer Alan Bennett and Maggie Smith the eponymous lady, introduced Alan Bennett to a far wider audience. 

4321 is immensely readable, at times compelling, sometimes saggy tale, says Noel Baker.

Pascoe argues that women are merely animals with very large 40,000 year old brains. The fat on our bottoms has evolved for pleasing males so why, she asks, do we hate it so?

For Pakistan-born, Aslam, who was brought up and educated in the north of England, paper is the “strongest material in the world. 

The pure raw delight that Golden Hill manages to conjure pretty much immediately is testament to author Francis Spufford’s love of the 18th century novel and his ability to create a Manhattan Island pulsing with energy and danger.

Every American loves their national treasure, Meryl Streep, except Donald Trump.

IN July 1898, novelist Emile Zola crossed the channel from Paris to London, at the height of the controversy surrounding the Dreyfus case. 

THE opening pages of Conquerors are brimming with eye-popping facts, images and incidents.

Hannah Stephenson grills industry experts about the hotly-tipped new titles for 2017.

The sight of a dust jacket in blue with a compass and a sea chart, and a sub-title promising ‘Pirates, Castaways and Madness’ raises hopes of an entertaining account of adventures on the high seas.

Did Britain’s political establishment and the media deliberately frame the Hillsborough tragedy as hooligan-inspired and exploit this falsehood to transform football. Brendan Daly examines the evidence.

THE best-selling author of more than 20 novels, including After I’m Gone and 2015’s Hush Hush returns with Wilde Lake, an evocative tale about the Brant family in Columbia, Maryland.

MANY of us who got our teenage romances, rebellions and rows over with before the era of Snapchat and Vine are truly grateful for this fortunate sequence of events. 

WILL RHODES lives in New York and works as a writer for The Travelers magazine.

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of 1966, Jon Savage’s book pinpoints the year as the turning point of the sixties, a decade that divided the twentieth century into old world and new, says Alannah Hopkin.

NOTHING will come of nothing, King Lear famously declares as he considers dividing his kingdom between his daughters commensurate with their expressions of love for him.

WHEN it comes to art songs in German, there is a special kind of prejudice that afflicts us.

THE story of a child going missing will resonate with many people from newspaper headlines if not actually from the direct experience of living with someone who has disappeared.

Richard Fitzpatrick selects the biggest reads of 2015 across the various genres

Publisher turned author Thomas Morris talks to Tony Clayton-Lea about the joy and challenges of becoming a writer — and sibling rivalry as a wonderful motivating force.

Ryle Dwyer says Bitter Freedom is, a thoughtful and balanced history that exposes the need to be wary about what actually happened around 1916 before we engage in an unquestioning orgy of centenary celebrations. 

Hanif Kureishi, the English novelist and playwright of Pakistani extraction, is best known for acclaimed work like My Beautiful Laundrette, Intimacy and ‘The Buddha of Suburbia, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1990. Frequently ambitious in terms of subject matter and exploring the boundaries of genre, new work by him is always eagerly anticipated.

MILAN Kundera’s first novel in 14 years is a short, amusing, and thought-provoking meditation on the nature of insignificance. 

Grandad’s Island by Benji Davies (Simon and Schuster €8.80)

Billy O’Callaghan looks at two collections of short stories, one uneven and the other a series of enduring, almost timeless classics.

We’re into the action from page one in Cal Moriarty’s thriller The Killing Of Bobbi Lomax, as cynical detective Marty Sinclair and his partner Al Alvarez rush to the scene of a bombing.

You Can’t Take An Elephant On The Bus, by Patricia Cleveland (Bloomsbury; €8.80) Elephant yearns to travel, but trying to board the bus is a definite no! 

FOR the first three quarters of this 325-page novel, Peruvian master, Mario Vargas Llosa seems to be spinning, in alternating chapters, two quite separate — albeit thematically similar — yarns.

SEBASTIAN BARRY’S latest novel, his eighth (just published in paperback), opens with a bang: the World War II torpedoing of a ship carrying British officers to Africa.

WHAT a conundrum. What a bother. What a pickle and a palaver. Frankly, we need to talk about Kazuo.

It can be hard to make an impact with a first novel, but Kate Hamer’s powerful thriller will certainly cement her name in the literature world.

Wibbly Pig and the Tooky by Mick Inkpen

Richard Fitzpatrick reveals some books that are certain to cause a stir this spring.

Public libraries in the UK are facing an “absolute disaster” and should try to emulate coffee shops, the author of an independent report into the service has said.

Beethoven’s life was a series of disappointments, recurring conflicts, worsening illness and increasing financial worries, but, says Eamonn Lawlor, nothing could diminish his genius