In 1954 William Golding was 43 years old and a nobody. He had been demobbed from the navy at the ...

Romeo and Juliet is routinely called “the world’s greatest love story”, as though it is all about...

Adrian Poole on why Shakespeare's reworking on the great love story of the ancient world is so po...

Macbeth may well be the most terrifying play in the English language, but it hasn’t always been s...

Western slavery goes back 10,000 years to Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq, where a male slave was worth...

This short study guide tells you all you need to know about John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Con...

A book which, drawing on the best critics of Hardy, explains and analyses his most controversial ...

John Wiltshire, one of the most original critics of Jane Austen, argues not only that Mansfield P...

The Connell Short Guide To Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong

An entertaining and erudite guide to Shakespeare’s great sequence of history plays, culminating i...

Within Western culture, World War Two continues to exercise an extraordinary fascination for gene...

Writing matters. We all do it, and we all admire it when it’s done well. It doesn’t just express ...

Jane Eyre, published on 16th October 1847, was an instant popular success. More than 150 years la...

In his day Winston Churchill was one of the most famous human beings who ever lived. In 1945 most...

Stephen Fender explains why To Kill a Mockingbird has had such an extraordinary impact on America...

Virginia Woolf described Middlemarch as one of the few novels written for grown-ups. Josie Billin...

A guide which shows the extraordinary impact of Hard Times and how, in his depiction of Victorian...

Notes & Quotes

The Connell Short Guide To Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

Pride and Prejudice is the most satisfying and enjoyable of Jane Austen's six books - and has bec...

A beautifully written study of Shakespeare's most shocking and brutal tragedy, by Valentine Cunni...

“There never was a wilder story imagined,” wrote one reviewer on the first publication of Franken...

Dr Johnson sums up the case against Milton: “the want of human interest is always felt.” It is th...

The Connell Short Guide To George Orwell's Animal Farm

Malcolm Hebron writes with one aim in mind: to help you read, understand and appreciate poetry. T...

“A heroine whom no-one but myself will much like,” the author famously proclaimed. In fact, in an...

Tom Bishop, a much respected Shakespearean scholar, looks at the bard's great romantic comedy, an...

The Knowledge Notes & Quotes

The Connell Guide To How to Write Well

The Connell Guide To The American Civil War

Ignorance about Islam runs deep in the West – ignorance of its rites, its beliefs, and above all ...

The Connell Short Guide To Ian McEwan's Atonement

The Connell Guide To Joseph Stalin

Napoleon has long divided historians. In this short, graphic discussion of his life and influence...

Throughout history, a handful of unusually driven individuals have been inspired to explore the l...

This short, incisive guide outlines the causes, events and consequences of the French Revolution.

The Connell Guide To How to Read a Poem

The turning point in British history, a story no one with any curiosity about the shaping of Brit...

Graham Bradshaw looks at the dark and disturbing world Emily Bronte creates in Wuthering Heights,...

The Connell Guide To The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich

Few works of literature are loved more than Great Expectations. This guide shows it is not only a...

When The Great Gatsby was first published, in 1925, reviews were mixed. H.L. Mencken called it “n...

A vivid portrait of Russia at the most turbulent period of modern history, and of one of the most...

In this short guide, Graham Bradshaw explains the secrets in and behind one of the greatest short...

The Connell Short Guide To Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Between 1933 and 1945, Germany was under the grip of the Third Reich. Headed by Adolf Hitler, thi...

The Connell Guide To Anglo-Norman England 1035-1189