John Green introduces the life of Jack London. There is a hullabaloo around the quincentenary this year of Shakespeare’s death, but Jack London’s centenary appears to have been forgotten. Yet in his lifetime he became one of the world’s first celebrity writers, and is undoubtedly one of the great novelists…

Snig was always losing things. One day he lost his hat. The next day he lost his umbrella. When he put things down, he forgot where he had put them. When he picked things up, he forgot to put them down. He was very forgetful. Sometimes Snig thought he had…

Ian Birchall reviews Phil Brett's novel, Comrades Come Rally, which imagines the development of a revolutionary situation in Britain. Three centuries ago Voltaire lamented that for every one person who read the philosopher Locke, there were a hundred reading Oriental romances. Voltaire’s response was to write Candide, an adventure story…