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This week's issue of the TLS

Welcome to the real Narnia The "hidden" code to Narnia can be found in medieval planetary lore, Tom Wright says. At the risk of sounding like Dan Brown, Michael Ward, the foremost living C. S. Lewis scholar, makes a wholly convincing case for reading the seven Narnia stories in relation to the seven planets ("including the Sun and the Moon but excluding Uranus, Neptune and the now demoted Pluto").

Full disclosure In A Face to the World, "the most informative and entertaining art book you are likely to read this year", Laura Cumming examines how artists, from Jan Van Eyck to Tracey Emin, have presented themselves as onlookers, victims and pioneers. Elizabeth Lowry considers the self-portraitists.

Trotsky at last "Only Vladimir Nabokov might have written a more compelling account of Trotsky's end. . . . a dethroned Russian in exile, waiting for his killer to come from the homeland even while he is desperately trying to complete his biography of the killer (Stalin)". Donald Rayfield applauds two new versions of Trotsky's life and black-farce death. In the rest of the paper, you will find Hardy's medicine, Edinburgh's history, Hobbes's liberty and, last but not least, In Brief.