Critic and novelist Margaret Drabble joins us to review the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we mark this year; Samuel Graydon discusses a new exhibition on J. R. R. Tolkien, including drawings and doodles, language trees and fan mail; the TLS's History editor David Horspool introduces a selection of new work on the medieval period

Works discussed

The Centenary Edition of the Novels of Muriel Spark, edited by Alan Taylor

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth, an exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, with accompanying book by Catherine McIlwaine

‘Finding Henry – Why England’s most powerful medieval monarch should be better remembered’ by Claudia Gold, in this week’s TLS

Medieval Bodies: Life, death and art in the Middle Ages by Jack Hartnell

Sea of Caliphs: The Mediterranean in the medieval Islamic world by Christophe Picard, translated by Nicholas Elliott

The Oxford English Literary History, Volume 1: 1000–1350: Conquest and Transformation by Laura Ashe

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