One of our greatest 20th-century novelists was born 100 years ago. It’s time we appreciated her extraordinary work, says Susie Goldsbrough

News and opinion from The Times & The Sunday Times

Elizabeth Jane Howard’s exquisite and understated novels have been overshadowed by her turbulent private life. But is the real reason why they are underestimated because they are books ‘about women,...

Why is no one ready?” wails Birdy at the start of Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton’s brilliant new BBC drama about London life in your twenties, as

This recently rediscovered novel of 1921 is a superb portrait of young women in the time of war

Does non-fiction have a woman problem? The Women’s Prize thinks so. Yesterday, the trust that oversees the UK’s prestigious women-only fiction award announced “

This highly unusual love story mixes supernatural weirdness with deep sea peril

Our critics choose their favourite books of the year, from heartrending fiction to swaggering history, juicy political memoirs and much more

By the age of 25, wunderkind Philip Larkin had written two strange and beautiful novels — but after that no more. Susie Goldsbrough on a literary what-if

With the longlist for the Booker prize announced next month, Susie Goldsbrough talks to the writer about her novel Soldier Sailor, our tip for the award

Last week, I turned 25. Other people’s birthdays, however epochal to them, are – like other people’s dreams – remote and uninteresting to everyone else. But thi

A bewhiskered Victorian gent walks into a bar. He orders a glass of Smoking Bishop, the 19th century’s answer to mulled wine (he is the official inventor of Chr

The Irish writer had a hit last year with the slender and warmhearted gem Small Things Like These. Her early stories are colder and nastier. By Susie Goldsbrough

In the soggy, dying days of the year, my family does the only rational thing a group of chatter-weary, parsnipped-out humans with a 40-year age range and a disp

I almost wish I’d never known it existed. That we’d been spared the Orphic turn-and-glimpse before it was tugged back into the underworld. By underworld, I mean

No one used to take vegetarians seriously. Remember that scene in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant dates a sad-eyed hippie who thinks cooking not just meat but fru

As the Qatar World Cup approaches, Susie Goldsbrough reveals the ups and downs of dating a devotee to the beautiful game

News and opinion from The Times & The Sunday Times

One of the many burdens I bear in my position of staggering responsibility as this newspaper’s assistant literary editor is that everyone – friends, distant cou

Contemporary fiction can sometimes feel like a playground. Youngsters tend to dominate the public perception of writers and readers: think Sally Rooney, TikTok

The 68-year-old writer from Kentucky has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for a second time for her Dickens revamp, Demon Copperhead

Rebecca Wait’s new novel about twin sisters and their family dynamics has Susie Goldsbrough in stitches

Last week was a bad time to be a management consultant. The publication of The Big Con by the UCL economists Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington triggered a

Vroom, vroom, here comes the Hoover. If you think I have taken leave of my senses, may I suggest you wander down to your local bookshop and head straight for th

Her powerful poems about the simmering emotions of youth have become cult classics. Now she turns her pen to the tragedy of Grenfell in a new collection that forges her reputation as one of our...

Instead of a guilt trip, this assured climate novel tells a moving human story, says Susie Goldsbrough

★★★★☆If you want to test the loyalty of a pop star’s fans, schedule a gig at Alexandra Palace on the night of a London Underground strike. “I know it took f***i

The new novel by the author of Exciting Times is caustic and funny but disappointing. We were expecting more, says Susie Goldsbrough

Fans of Sally Rooney tend to be pretentious types (we have more attractive qualities too), which is perhaps why the directors Lenny Abrahamson and Leanne Welha

The former poet laureate has edited a centuries-spanning, 600-page poetry collection on death, loss and consolation. He tells Susie Goldsbrough how family tragedy inspired him

Elizabeth Jane Howard’s great family saga The Cazlet Chronicles is romantic, violent and gutsy

William Boyd stays away from the zeitgeist. He’s not interested in writing about current events. “In two or three years’ time, nobody will care and nobody will