The 100 best Christmas cracker jokes for 2023

The New Statesman’s 20 best books of 2023

Non-fiction A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel Hilary Mantel, the beloved Wolf Hall author and double Booker Prize winner, died in 2022. The essays, reviews and lectures in this posthumous collection display Mantel’s extraordinary range and depth as well as the eclecticism of her interests: her topics include Jane Austen, GoodFellas, and what it means to be childless and a woman in the public eye. While some of these pieces are of th…

The 100 best Christmas cracker jokes for 2023

Our Christmas cracker jokes super list will help make your friends and family laugh at the dinner table

Best children’s books of 2023

Dream-seeking bears, a pancake-making lion, an ingenious guide to rewilding and moreThis year’s best books for children address sadness and fear while celebrating love, resilience, hope and joy. In The Big Dreaming by Michael Rosen and Daniel Egnéus (Bloomsbury), two bears are preparing for the Big Sleep, but Little Bear worries they won’t have enough dreams to last the winter. He sets out on a dangerous journey, from which he returns with store…