- Features RSS Feed

The Saturday miscellany: Feminist classics; Anna Wintour; Clerkenwell Design Week; Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing; Louis Vuitton

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Culture clash: Feminist classics

Five-minute memoir: Russ Litten recalls the day he saw his double in Prague

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

I know nobody in Prague, not a soul, which is one of the main reasons I decide to move there. The last person I expect to see is myself. I always thought that the Doppelgänger only existed in Edgar Allen Poe tales. But I see mine in Prague.

A nation with no navigation: Already a master of the sea James Hamilton-Paterson now rules in the air

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Somehow you don't expect a famously footloose writer who has lived rough for long stretches on an islet in the Philippines, reported on wars in Indo-China and military juntas in Brazil, and then found later-life acclaim as the historian and celebrant of daredevil British aviators, to pick you up in what he calls a "Chelsea tractor".

One minute with: Charles Moore, biographer

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Where are you now and what can you see?

Arifa Akbar: A simple, enraging story that provokes action? That's a book after Orwell's own heart

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

One of the biggest challenges for artful political writers must surely be to speak about a staggering injustice without raising their voices in anger. More difficult still to begin an exposé of a wrongdoing without the urge to rush it out to publication before the public's memory of it fuzzes into indifference. There is enough such sausage-factory publishing to prove what a selling point "timing"can be.

Dan Brown's Inferno: Publishers poised for biggest-sales since Harry Potter as Da Vinci Code author's latest Robert Langdon story hits shelves

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:01:34 GMT

Dan Brown's new book, Inferno, is roundly expected to whoosh off the shelves - both wooden and digital - upon release tomorrow, its author having already shifted more than 200 million books worldwide.

Dan 'Dante' Brown's Inferno: Prepare to unleash Hell!

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:01:00 GMT

Of all the readers keenly awaiting Dan Brown's new blockbuster Inferno (Bantam), published on Tuesday, none could be more eager than the historian Michael Haag. Author of the Rough Guides to The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol, he is already at work on Inferno Decoded: a guide to the myths and mysteries of Dan Brown's Inferno (Profile). "I'm writing a book about a book I haven't read yet. Nobody gets a peek in advance, so one's writing blind," he says wryly.

The Blagger's Guide To: Children's books in translation

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:01:00 GMT

Once upon a time, two bookish parents – one German-American and one French – went looking for the books that they had loved when they were little, in order to read them to their own children. But no English translations existed, so Adam Freudenheim and Stephanie Seegmuller set up a new imprint and published the books themselves. The result is Pushkin Children's Books.

Invisible Ink: No 172 - Perry Rhodan

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:01:00 GMT

What's the most successful science fiction story series ever written? How about one that has sold over a billion copies so far, plus various spinoffs, and has influenced a generation of writers? Perry Rhodan was created in 1961 by KH Scheer and Clark Darlton, and was conceived as a 30-volume epic booklet series with a single story arc, back in the days when you could attempt such a thing.

Between the Covers 12/05/2013

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:01:00 GMT

There is good news and bad news to report following last week's Blagger's Guide to the Desmond Elliott Prize for new fiction. The bad news comes in the form of a mea culpa. We got it wrong: this is the sixth annual prize, not the seventh. The good news is that Grace McLeen, who we reported had announced her retirement from writing after winning the 2012 prize for The Land of Decoration, is back! McLeen has written a second novel, which will be published by Sceptre in July. The Professor of Poetry features a "respected academic" and writer who is "paralysed by the fear of writing something worthless". Sceptre describes the novel as "profound and hypnotic". Hilary Mantel has called it "an astonishing and luminous novel" and McCleen "an author who, with only her second novel, is setting her own clever agenda. She is a finished artist, but performs on the page with all the aerial grace of someone who senses no limits to what she can do."

Bloomsbury laid bare: The last member of the famous artistic set reveals all

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

It is more than 70 years since Virginia Woolf last put pen to paper. And 50 since her sister Vanessa Bell put away her paints. In 1941, Virginia filled her pockets with stones and walked out into the River Ouse, never to return. Vanessa died peacefully 20 years later, aged 81, after a bout of bronchitis. But the Bloomsbury Group – of which the sisters were among the leading lights – remains with us, its focus on personal relationships, ideas and aesthetics as appealing today as ever.

Five-minute memoir: Peggy Hesketh remembers a fire that engulfed her bedroom

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

My aunt told me many years later that the fire had been started by children flinging sparklers at the sky. Sparklers are a particular wonder of my American childhood: punk sticks dipped in something volatile that made them fizz and pop in a wondrous fireworks display that we could hold in our hands and wave and swirl until the sticks burnt down. Or we would throw them as high as we could and watch the sparks shower down as we screamed and clapped, feeling as if we controlled the stars.

Boyd Tonkin: If we won't fund arts, at least stop the state from disrupting the cultural traffic

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

A few years' ago, I took a tiny part in a review of national arts policy headed by Sir Brian McMaster, former director of the Edinburgh Festival. After two decades of grim utilitarianism, in which culture won state approval only thanks to its role in civic regeneration, McMaster went back to basics. His first-class report stressed "supporting excellence" in arts rather than ticking demographic boxes or lending a fractional lift to cash-flow in the inner cities.

One Minute With: Marcel Theroux, novelist

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Where are you now and what can you see?

Middle England's revolution: How the provinces rebelled when a Westminster elite blocked reform of Parliament

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

On 7 May [1832], the Opposition carried the day. Despite a further fine speech from [prime minister Earl] Grey, the Government was defeated. The defeat was not a puny one: the majority was 45. This meant that the entire effort of the Government up till now, since the presentation of the First Reform Bill in March 1831, was in effect put on hold.

Jacqueline Wilson: 'Spelling is not something that seems to be taught at schools'

Sun, 05 May 2013 16:57:13 GMT

Tracy Beaker author Jacqueline Wilson has criticised the language skills of British schoolchildren – revealing that her young overseas fans write more eloquent English than UK kids.

Could former porn star Sasha Grey be the next EL James?

Sat, 04 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Sex sells, still. Blame EL James if you like, but ever since Fifty Shades of Grey shifted 40 million copies around the world last year, thus making it abundantly clear that a great many of us like our bedroom habits to involve a lot more than slap and tickle, publishers have desperately sought a successor, another sex-riddled bestseller to tempt us into illicit blushes.

Exclusive: Final fragments of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:30:57 GMT

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard, one of the most poignant and enduringly popular novels of the 20th century, left only a few other pieces of fiction when he died in 1957 at the age of 60. A new book, published by Alma Classics in a new translation by Stephen Parkin, collects Lampedusa’s extant shorter fiction and provides a glimpse into the writer’s workshop and the background to the composition of his masterpiece. It also includes the previously unpublished fragment “The Turret”, which we reproduce here.

Kate Clanchy: Scot free among the English

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:30:49 GMT

Unlike Kate Clanchy, you may not remember the summer of 1989 as being particularly stifling. Maybe you need to have Celtic skin for that. You might, however, remember the enormous cellphones, the big hair and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. “Perfect Skin,” muses Clanchy. “Such an objectifying song, yet we all listened to it and didn’t think.”

Invisible Ink: No 171 - Madeleine Henrey

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:30:21 GMT

Dying three years short of her century in 2004, Madeleine Henrey became a writer almost by chance, so it’s all the more surprising that she was a French woman writing in English for the British market. This miner’s daughter had grown up in the impoverished backstreets of Clichy and moved to Soho with her seamstress mother, where she found employment with a French newsagent.

Between the Covers 05/054/2013

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:30:18 GMT

Poor men must be starting to think there’s a conspiracy, now that the third literary list in a month has been released that has more female authors on it than male. First, Granta announced its latest list of the Best of Young British Novelists, which had 12 women and eight men.

The Blagger's Guide to... the Desmond Elliott prize

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:30:10 GMT

The longlist for the seventh annual Desmond Elliott Prize will be formally announced at a reception at Foyles bookshop in central London on Tuesday.

Five-minute memoir: Sam Mills recalls an extraordinary taxi ride

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

In November 2005, I took a trip to India. I was 30 years old and I'd never visited the country before, despite having a south London childhood that I can only describe as half-Western, half-Eastern.

The Saturday miscellany: Radiohead vs Jay-Z; Nigel Farage; London's Brewing; Making It Up: Photographic Fictions; The Marine Quarterly

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Culture clash: Radiohead vs Jay-Z at Glastonbury

Boyd Tonkin: The 'Arabic Booker' lets us hear the real voices of change – loud and soft

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Change in the Arab world can come in many sizes, guises - and volumes. Take, at one end of the dial, the fearless mockery of Ibrahim Eissa, Egyptian editor, satirist and novelist, a persistent thorn in the side of the Mubarak regime and even more of an affront to the Islamists currently in power.