Books

Ursula K Le Guin: Giant of Science fiction

Award-winning novelist, who has died aged 88, deserves to have her books read by everyone, because like the best science fiction they are not really about the future or distant worlds but about the here and now

Charles Dickens: The man who invented Christmas plagiarised Jesus

The author's classic ‘A Christmas Carol’ created the holiday tradition as we know it while his Scrooge has been echoed in films from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ to this season’s ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’. But it can also be seen as a mirror to biblical parables