From the Bondi beach rescuers to the women taking on the police, great acts of courage offer hope even in the bleakest times

A knighthood, a lifetime achievement award and a hit theatre production of The Line of Beauty… the author on a year of personal success and political change

The Hay festival president is asking readers for book recommendations that will ‘entice the most reluctant reader’ to help combat the decline in leisure reading

The proposal, supported by Kate Mosse and Philip Pullman, aims to make public library membership a national birthright

Tessa Wong and her children had just left Bondi Beach when the gunmen launched a deadly attack.

‘He had one illusion – France; and one disillusion – mankind, including Frenchmen.’ John Maynard Keynes’s...

The ‘queen of romantic comedy’ has died 18 months after announcing her brain cancer diagnosis

More than 1,000 words used as far back as 325BC to be collected for insight into past linguistic landscape

Clémentine Autain believes only a leftwing alliance united behind one leader can stave off the threat of a far-right president

Canadian author discusses US under Trump and says setting of her dystopian novel has ‘become much closer’ Margaret Atwood has said the plot of her book The Handmaid’s Tale, which depicts a story of an authoritarian regime where women are forced to reproduce, has become “more and more plausible” in recent years. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Atwood said she believed the plot was “bonkers” when she first had the concept for the novel as the US was the “democratic ideal” at the time. Continue reading...

Emily Price  Female Senedd Members have spoken out about the appalling misogyny, abuse and harassment they regularly face – with some warning that intimidation is discouraging Welsh women from taking ...

Calls for disenfranchisement rest on a single assumption: that women’s citizenship is partial and conditional

Exclusive: Hardship grant applications to the Royal Literary Fund, including unseen letters by Doris Lessing and a note from James Joyce saying that he ‘gets nothing in the way of royalties’, show aut...

Democracy, birds and hangover cures – famous fans put their questions to the visionary author

What does it mean to lose a language, and what does it take to save it? Those were the big questions being asked in Barcelona recently, says freelance writer Stephen Burgen

From public service broadcasting to an independent judiciary, these are the things that we must fight to keep, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash

Ultimatums sent to publications appear to intensify as Nigel Farage’s party rises in polls

Chair Samir Shah is a picture of misery before MPs while Robbie Gibb proves the master of deflection

The representatives of the perpetrators of abuse must not be allowed to control the process for survivor redress