In an extract from Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads, author and activist Benedict Rogers recalls his unceremonious exit from Burma in 2011.

Writer and word explorer Andrew Taylor is the author of The Greeks Had a Word For It. Exclusively for Think Smarter, Andrew shares some of his favourite words from around the world, for when English doesn’t quite cut it…

Ghostly is a new short story collection curated and illustrated by Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife. Read Saki’s The Open Window, one of the stories included in the collection.

Read an extract from The Book of Magic, Brian Copenhaver’s new anthology of the history of the tradition of magic from antiquity to the enlightenment, in which seventeenth century witch hunter Matthew Hopkins describes his methods of discovering witches in his Essex village.

In The Face of Britain, art historian and journalist Simon Schama explores the history of British portraiture, and unveils the secrets of some of the nation’s best loved works of art. In this extract, Schama tells the story of Jane Morris (nee Burden), and the artists infatuated by her.  It was not the wandering armadillos, the kangaroos, the […]

Edited and introduced by novelist and journalist Philip Hensher, The Penguin Book of the British Short Story celebrates the diversity and energy of British writers. In this extract, Hensher introduces the collection.

Read an extract from Emmeline Pankhurst’s My Own Story, an inspiration for the film Suffragette.

In a career spanning almost forty years, Transworld Publishing Director Sally Gaminara has worked with authors including Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and Nick Robinson. Exclusively for Think Smarter, Sally reflects on the editing process.

An accomplished novelist and short story writer, and a professor of creative writing at the University of Warwick, A. L. Kennedy understands the perils of relying on real life to draw your fictional characters. In this extract from On Writing, Kennedy describes the responsibility of invading a reader’s space, and how not to fill your fiction with the ghosts of your past.

Read an extract from Emma Hooper’s debut novel, Etta and Otto and Russell and James, a story of love, pain and memory spanning fifty years, three lives, two continents and an ocean.