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...write a mystery novel in which the true villain was impossible to guess? The response to that challenge was a tale of strychnine and murder that launched one of the most successful careers in crime fiction. No exaggeration whatsoever: the book was published, after several years of publisher hunting, in 1920; its title is The Mysterious Affair at Styles; its brilliant...

...writing about the history and the cultural work of the writer’s house museum for my latest book. The first writer’s house that admirers visited after he died in 1374 was Petrarch’s in Arqua, Italy. But what did these admirers hope to find? One of the earliest comments on the oddness of this impulse to visit dead authors at home is the elaborate practical joke known...

...writings on politics had profound philosophical resonances too. As I see it, her greatest achievement was that she stood up against two deep-flowing currents of twentieth century thought – one which tried to see the whole of public life in terms of conscience and personal morality, the other seeking to reduce it to clashes of economic or sectional interests. Her big...