Many writers have now had their birthdays marked with a decorative Google Doodle: from Jules Verne’s interactive, underwater themed doodle to J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan becoming acquainted ...
Anyone familiar with Bathsheba in the Bible and depictions in art will have an insight into her namesake’s character in Zoë Heller’s novel.
We all know that novelists devote a staggering ...
All May and June: The Rebel Dining Society’s ‘The Green Hour’ Dinner, £40
The Rebel Dining Society returns with the second instalment of The Green Hour, an exciting collaboration ...
Photograph (c) Paige Sinkler
The other night I was driving home from college, ruminating about my first draft of a short story. Everyone was behaving too reasonably. Someone should be glum. ...
The BBC adaptation of the Crimson Petal and the White does not provide a neatly-wrapped ending for audiences. Image: BBC.
The BBC’s adaptation of Michel Faber’s novel, The Crimson Petal and ...
Aldous Huxley reckoned science and literature were alike because both observe the world and attempt to interpret it in words. Fair enough, but when science is described in literature, there’s ...
So far in my writing, I’ve tended to trust in the belief of James Joyce: “In the particular is contained the universal.” But in seeking publication for my own work, ...
It’s the first time I’ve been to the Imperial War Museum since I was 11 and I’m a bit disorientated, so I ask a member of staff where the Once ...
It is often said that the job of the poet is not to tell you what she felt, but to recreate the event or experience as closely as possible so ...
Brighton provides the atmospheric setting for Greene’s novel and its adaptations
A new film adaptation has brought attention once again to Graham Green’s 1937 masterpiece Brighton Rock. I ...
Event Listings, February 2011
From Egyptian mummies to the daddy of folk, via French farce and classical music, there’s so much more to February than hearts and flowers. Wander lonely as ...
It’s official: Amazon now sells more e-books in the US than it does paperbacks. The gradual disappearance of the physical book could be the long-awaited solution to that old problem: ...
I bought a new diary today. One of my New Year’s resolutions, probably like thousands of other people across the country, was to get into the discipline of writing a ...
I think that horror has traditionally been considered a “minor” genre, especially in Spain. Sometimes we seem to forget that horror is one of the oldest genres in the history ...
Money and sport go together. In the last few weeks, as the credibility of cricket wobbled under allegations of corruption and match-fixing , I’ve been reading the funny and satirically ...
This month’s Litro has a bit of an East London thread running through it, which is appropriate for me, as I’ve been trudging the streets of the East End looking ...
There are some words that are worth keeping, I’ve always thought. Everyone has their favourites – my friend Neil always swears by cornucopia. Defenestration seems to come up quite regularly. ...
I’ve been haunted by whales this week. It all started with Dave from my writing group trying to list songs about whales, which spawned an eclectic playlist. Then ...
Last week I squeezed into a packed and sweaty auditorium at the South Bank Centre to watch performance poet and punk legend John Cooper Clarke’s show for the London Literature ...
It might be a sign of the digital times, or an indicator of economic gloom, but working in a secondhand bookshop can be slow. We have many ...