If you have read The Lord of the Rings, there is a good chance that you skipped over one or more of the 75 songs and poems in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic. Yet long before he was the “father of modern fantasy”, Tolkien’s great ambition was to be a poet. He wrote hundreds of poems […]

Sally Rooney’s new novel, Intermezzo, is finally here – and nearly everyone I know seems to be reading it. It’s almost like the pre-streaming days, when everyone would settle on the sofa at the same time to watch the new hit TV series. The sense that we were all part of the same unfolding experience