I respect and understand what it is that cleaners do. I know mine is honest, reliable and too bright for this work. The people who go into battle against dirt, germs and chaos are essential, and heroic. If they’re not...
“All must have prizes” declare those who watch the annual round of prizes – but while this seems true for some, it certainly isn’t that case for most. Prizes are the signs by which an outstanding author is supposed to...
If you were to ask what place in Britain has inspired most writers, you would probably guess London; Devon comes a close second. So many authors past and present have been drawn to (and have drawn on) the county that...
“I love England in a heat-wave” says Leon Tallis in Ian McEwan;’s Atonement, “It’s a different country. All the rules change.” As the summer of 2018 continues to break records for its prolonged absence of rain (last month was the...
If you have seen recent films Dunkirk or Darkest Hour, you’d be forgiven for thinking that World War Two was a struggle in which half the human race was missing. Its soldiers and strategists, politicians and prisoners, workers and wounded are all men,...
When Michael Franks won the annual Wingate Prize yesterday for his memoir the Mighty Franks, a dazzling portrait of an eccentric Los Angeles family, it set the seal on what looks to be an annus mirabilis for a new kind of heroine....
A celebration of the life and work of acclaimed novelist Helen Dunmore. A wonderful friend and literary inspiration.
Stories have the power, which Dickens above all used, to make the haves see the have-nots as people. My burglar was not a beast, but a person.
Wizards and vampires are out. The market in teen fiction is dominated now by societies in breakdown. And it’s girls who are lapping them up.