Jude the Obscure

Others opt for something subtler — maybe “Jude the Obscure,” which actor Paul Rudd chose, or Thomas Piketty’s “Capital,” featured behind Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Others opt for something subtler — maybe “Jude the Obscure,” which the actor Paul Rudd chose, or Thomas Piketty’s “Capital,” featured behind Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Last summer, I found myself reading Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure.”

To my mind, the most tragic British novel of thwarted education and domestic entrapment is Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure.”

Named after symbols traditionally associated with St John the Baptist, the Lamb and Flag is rumoured to have hosted the great writer Thomas Hardy, who set his dark novel “Jude the Obscure” partly in a fictionalised Oxford called Christminster.