The bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography has devised the ultimate test of your knowledge — and the answers are facts that have shaped human history

A globe-trotting historian argues that America’s ills are down to its fetishisation of the wrong kind of liberty

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher author summons up the murky postwar London underworld where John Christie killed with impunity

In his autobiography the former prime minister avoids introspection or penetrating insight, preferring instead to hide behind his cartoonish image

From Alan Hollinghurst and Robert Harris to Helen Fielding and David Nicholls, here are some of the highlights on this year’s programme

At 83, the evolutionary biologist is at a point in his life when he has nothing to fear from bullies trying to intimidate him, he tells Andrew Billen

The novelist talks to Sophie Grenham about emigrating from Boston to Dublin, and his thoughtful debut

The Watchmen writer loses the speech bubbles in his gothic vision of postwar London

The Buffalo Stance star was a 1980s icon but her wonderful memoir reveals a childhood blighted by addiction

The Handmaid’s Tale author was a poet first and foremost. Our critic reflects on her selected verse — plus that of her contemporary Michael Longley