Search

When I heard my old chums Beryl Bainbridge and Doris Lessing fulminating on the radio against 'chick lit', I was confused at first, because in my youth Chiclets were another [...]

Considering my important opinion-forming role, I am not the inveterate blog-hound that I ought to be, otherwise I wouldn't now be bringing you old news. Having very early on tired [...]

One Damian Horner, freelance marketing consultant, clambered up onto his high horse on the Opinion page last week and shot himself in the foot in the process. Why oh why, [...]

There has been a fair amount of mal-pensant comment about the appointment of literary agent Ali Gunn as the Conservative Party's Media and Lifestyle guru. Even Bent was pleased to [...]

'Celeb books hit saturation point', ran a headline in last week's Bookseller, over a load of hand-wringing from publishers about all the nonentities flooding the bookshops. Were they drugged, or [...]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that idle hacks in want of a kick-off for a couple of hundred words about Jane Austen will always reach for the phrase: 'It [...]

'But if editing disappears, as it seems to be doing, there'll be no books worth taking the credit for,' intoned Blake Morrison at the end of his where-have-all-the-editors gone article [...]

More confusing shenanigans at HarperCollins, which reminds me that I should revisit my Caroline Michel shares at Pubdaq, which have been a little inactive of late. New readers begin here. [...]

According to an article in the Telegraph the other day, publishing is a 'barely rational business'. That seems about right. You would have to have a heart of stone not [...]

As might have been expected, an unseemly spat has broken out between various publishers with varying degrees of interest in the late John Peel. Transworld, with a hefty investment to [...]

'Library lending flags' read a head line in the Organ a couple of weeks ago. That made me sit up. While there is a general air of crisis about the [...]

As stirring headlines go, 'Minister calls for library standards reform' is right up there with Small earthquake in Chile' or 'Editor turns literary agent'. I sat bolt upright, senses quivering, [...]

The Friends of Cheetham have been in a right old two-and-eight this week. Ever since the night of the long knives we've been on 24-hour watch, waiting to see what [...]

Depending on whom you read Bill Clinton's book gig at Guildhall was either a glittering night of 'rock-star glamour' (Skateboarders' Weekly), or a rather dull affair involving 'a dingy band [...]

John Updike, who is presumably more at home with ham on rye than Hay-on-Wye made his way to the Welsh borders last week. Having already been interviewed at enormous length [...]

It was only to be expected that Andrew Franklin, once he was named Small Publisher of the Year, would start slamming things. They always do. Actually, what usually happens is [...]

I have been accused by a reader of being 'disgustingly polite' towards Skateboarder's Weekly. This naturally comes as rather a shock for a hard-hitting book-trade commentator like myself; I like [...]

When, as he inevitably must, Sir Richard Attenborough makes a Major Motion Picture called 'The Ted Smart Story' (or maybe just 'Smart'), there'll be plenty of incident for him to [...]

Yet again the Editor saw fit to leave, if not his most senior commentator, then at least the one with the most marbles, back in Blighty at Frankfurt time. His [...]

To judge by last week's letters page, I am not alone in finding the story about returns being given to prisoners to destroy bizarre in the extreme. My old friend [...]

You'll be glad to hear, in this palindromic Year of Our Lord 2002, that the book trade 'is in the vanguard of what has been dubbed 'euro-creep',' according to PN. [...]

In these uncertain times we must all pull together. This is why I am taking the unusual step of handing my entire column over to someone else this week. Lady [...]