Five stories that explore cultural and literary references to the tarot.
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Posted inQuotes, Unapologetic Women
Hilary Mantel’s Eulogy for the Unfinished Diana
“As Diana was a collective creation,” Mantel writes at the Guardian, “she was also a collective possession.”
Posted inStory
‘What Is Missing Is Her Soul’: Women and Art, Girls and Men
In a new book, Camille Laurens examines the life of the model for Degas’ masterpiece, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.” But there’s still so much we don’t know.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Princess Myth
“Royal time should move slowly and by its own laws: creeping, like the flow of chrism from a jar.” On the 20th anniversary of her death, Hilary Mantel performs a remarkable post-mortem on Diana, Princess of Wales.
Posted inArts & Culture
Longreads Best of 2017: Profile Writing
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in profile writing.
Posted inReading List, Unapologetic Women
The Unknowable Diana, 20 Years On: A Reading List
Why were we personally affected by a woman few knew and even fewer ever understood?
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
God Save the Queen: Seven Stories about Elizabeth II
From her education to the careful plans for her funeral, seven stories on the long-reigning monarch.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Does Anne Boleyn Obsess Us?
From Hilary Mantel’s bestselling novels to a Showtime series, Anne Boleyn haunts us still. But why? Putting to rest the rumors of the third nipple (probably just a mole) and the sixth finger (a vestigial fingernail, but that’s what comes of generations of marrying cousins), Bordo’s larger goal is to ask: Why does Anne get […]
Posted inProfiles & Interviews, Quotes
Doris Lessing on What It Means to Be a Writer
“I think a writer’s job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone’s read a book of mine, they’ve had—I don’t know what—the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way perhaps. That’s what I think writers are for. This is what our function […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Dead Are Real
Inside the imagination of Hilary Mantel, now two-time Booker Prize-winning author of historical fiction including Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies: “When she wakes in the morning, she likes to start writing right away, before she speaks, because whatever remnants sleep has left are the gift her brain has given her for the day. […]
