An author’s fascinating or salacious backstory can be key to a book’s allure (and marketing campaign). But the taste of the reading public isn’t infinitely flexible, and this is nowhere… Read more »

The history of the world is usually told as one of scientific and technological progress, matched by the decline of social propriety and the weakening of morals. We have the… Read more »

Shakespeare: remember him? But when you come to think of him, what image floats into your mind’s eye? Perhaps it’s the “Chandos” portrait, which may or may not depict the… Read more »

Marketing cookbooks and their authors brings with it a particular set of challenges. Whether you’re dealing with an author’s unfortunate recent history, claims of racism and cultural appropriation, or explosives,… Read more »

British television audiences have experienced their fair share of the grim and gloomy in recent times. Scandi-crime exports such as ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Bridge’ brought hard violence and murder… Read more »

In the past few years Hilary Mantel has become a literary superstar, winning a second Booker for her Thomas Cromwell series and being made a Dame in 2014 for her… Read more »

“Summer 2011. Berlin. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of ground, alive and well.” It’s not the setup to some juvenile joke; it’s the setup to a best-selling novel:… Read more »

In a country where the banning of books is rare and mostly unheard of, France has recently experienced a spate of attacks by its politicians on the most liberal of… Read more »

“There are many things I regret doing and being a judge for the Booker prize is one of them”. This is Paul Bailey, speaking about being a judge in 1982,… Read more »

The Booker Prize is not perfect. Anyone who does not have a book shortlisted on any given year can tell you with annoyance just how much (too much) of books… Read more »