The Latest Breaking News from Maggie OFarrell

First-time novelists are joined by two former winners on the diverse list, as the six ‘ambitious and hard-hitting’ contenders are revealed

The RSC has reopened its refurbished Swan Theatre with an eagerly anticipated adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel Hamnet, said Sam Marlowe in The Stage. As “snug and supple” a fit for the Stratford stage as one of the bespoke gloves made by William Shakespeare’s bullying father, it imagines the…

Adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel will premiere at Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in April

In her latest novel, The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell takes readers to Renaissance Italy. Lush metaphors and minute description of life in ducal palaces abound in her reimagining of the life of Lucrezia de’ Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici, and his Spanish wife,…

This week’s bookcase includes reviews of House Of Hunger by Alexis Henderson and The Romantic by William Boyd.

Our critics’ picks include a historical melodrama based on a real-life maybe murder, a romp through the illegal dance halls of 20s London and a gloriously biting satire set in Rwanda.

The beloved writer of the Wolf Hall trilogy and Beyond Black has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute

The novelist on a mesmerising mime show, the brilliance of Barbara Hepworth and the best falafel in Edinburgh

Clear a physical space in your house and a mental space in your head for this season’s biggest-hitting new releases, says our resident expert bookworm Francesca Brown