What literary text could seem further from reality these days than Beowulf — that approximately 1,500-year-old Anglo Saxon verse epic about a Scandinavian hero fighting monsters that’s known mainly by ...

An illustration of the eponymous hero fighting the dragon, next to a manuscript of Beowulf from circa AD 1000, located in the British Library (iStock/Getty) The tale describes a battle with three ...

One does not casually read Beowulf. It takes commitment. It also takes a good translation, and few were better at that than Oxford don J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. His son, ...

My thanks for one of your wonderful book reviews. On your pages, I find books that other, more “trendy” reviewers largely ignore. This one, “The Wordhord” by Hana Videen, reviewed by Henry Hitchings ...

Somebody returned a copy of "Beowulf" 54 years after it was checked out. At the time, the library charged 5 cents per day for overdue books. The library said the book would have accumulated a fine of ...

So, in 1983, I was 12, and my parents took me to see an actor who had been in 'Star Wars', performing in York Theatre Royal. I felt a little self-conscious as the lights went down, a harpist plucked ...