Summer Stars runs from Tues 4 June to Sat 31 August. Get Reading! Now that school is over you can still spark your imagination, join in activities and take part in our exciting Summer Stars challenge.
Émile Zola’s Germinal tells the story of an impoverished French mining village and a strike which is launched in protest at their increasingly poor conditions.
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin
By some estimates, 49% of the world’s adult population is due to vote in elections in 2024 and what better way to begin the year than with Turchin’s brilliant book about how much trouble some of these same societies are in.
Georges Simenon, who was born 120 years ago in the Belgian city of Liège, lived an eventful life and was a prolific author. He wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories about his most famous character, Jules Maigret or, as everyone (including his wife) calls him, Maigret.
Several acquaintances have confided in me that one of their New Year’s resolutions is to start reading again. When asked for any tips my advice is always the same: start with something short. In that vein, one of the books I have read since the beginning of the year is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables, a novel supposedly considered “too intimate” to be published during the author’s life.
On 7 April 1926 an Irish woman stepped out from a crowd in Rome and fired a shot at one of the 20th century's most infamous dictators. One bullet grazed the nose of Benito Mussolini, but the Italian leader survived the assassination attempt.