Exeter Book News Today

Strike out on the paper trail and discover six bookish cities with vibrant literary connections

Typing this column into a not-very-smartphone on a crowded commuter train, I found that rail minister Huw Merriman’s surname kept auto-correcting itself to “Merriment”. He’s provided plenty of it this week.

When was the earliest recorded British joke? Ian Hislop scours the country to find out.

It’s all very well Greece wanting its rightful treasure – but the Brits have left some pretty good artefacts lying around the planet. Surely it’s time they came home?

Soper’s opera is intimately concerned with the ways women construct themselves with and against patriarchy in the internet age.

In this week's Sound of Cinema on Radio 3, Matthew Sweet explores the bubblegum hue's role in films across the ages

MS Junius 11 and its Poetry is a fresh close reading of the texts of one of the four surviving major manuscripts of Old English poetry

‘Vinland’ will be at The Wardrobe Theatre on March 11

St. Colman's hideaway in the Burren is a still point in a passing world

The author’s folksongs add a new dimension to these evocative short stories inspired by objects and texts from medieval times