"When Tolkien's Lord of the Rings appeared in 1954, it was eagerly sought by a rapidly widening community of readers while snootily dismissed by eminent critics as juvenile escapism. For many years most literary scholars refused to take Tolkien…
"The birth of Qur'anic calligraphy was a major event in the early history of Islam. In a few decades, it raised the Arabs and their language from the remote fringes of the civilised world to its very heart. Alain George brings together manuscript,…