A government proposal to ease restrictions on the sale of imported cultural works risks harming a world-class industryThe hoopla around the release of Sally Rooney’s new novel on Tuesday – with bookshops opening early, and queues of shoppers eager to l…
Wainwright prize for nature writing goes to James Rebanks for English Pastoral
Award comes during booming year for nature books, with sales over the last two months reaching £2.8mJames Rebanks’s story of his family’s farm in the Cumbrian Fells, English Pastoral, has won the Wainwright nature writing prize, praised as a “seminal w…
The best recent thrillers – review roundup
This month’s crop of crime and suspense fiction includes an engaging tale of government secrets by Robert Peston and a nail-biting new series from Val McDermidZaffre, £14.99, pp400 Continue reading…
オークションで「至宝」を見抜き、競り勝つために必要なもの
＜ヘミングウェイの書簡、ナポレオンの死亡報告書、エディソンの試作品……。なぜ次々と大発見ができるのか。史料文書のプロ、ネイサン・ラーブが『歴史の鑑定人』に綴った歴史的至宝にまつわるミステリアスな物語＞ インターネットオークションやフリマアプリが身近な今、歴史上の偉人が書いた文書や著名人が使っていた物品を手に入れるのは、さほど難しくないようにも感じられる。 けれども、画面の中で見つけたそれらは、本当に真正品（ほんもの）だろうか。そんなに簡単に見極められるものだろうか。 『歴史の鑑定人――ナポレ…
‘Anthony Hopkins committed within five minutes’: how I wrote The Father with Florian Zeller
After Christopher Hampton saw Zeller’s dementia drama on stage in Paris, neither language, finance nor another film adaptation could thwart their collaboration on the screenplayI first met Florian Zeller about eight years ago. It was in the foyer of th…
The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books
Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do. From a report:Steve Potash, the bearded and bespectacled president and C.E.O. of OverDrive, spent the second week of March, 2020, on a business trip t…
Tenderness by Alison MacLeod review – polite society’s rude awakening
Lady Chatterley’s Lover and US politics collide in an enjoyable widescreen novel comprising real and fictional characters over half a centuryAlison MacLeod’s arresting new novel begins with the ostensible serendipity of two historic triumphs: within th…
I’ve lost my family, my house, my country. I know we can live beyond grief
The Christchurch earthquake was just one of the tragedies Michelle Tom survived. From adversity, she says, we can all learn to harness fear, resist panic, and practise trustIn his 1961 book A Grief Observed, about the loss of his wife, CS Lewis said th…
‘Unreal’: Samaritans volunteer has life turned around by six-figure book deal
James Norbury’s self-published Big Panda and Tiny Dragon inspired by the lives of callers to helplineA man living below the poverty line, helping others as a volunteer with the Samaritans, who self-published a book after literary agents showed no inter…
Life being put on hold was just the spur this writer needed to fulfil her youthful ambition
Charlotte Northedge wrote a new novel in lockdown. She considers others who have realised the dreams of their youthI wrote a novel in the last lockdown. To be clear, it wasn’t one of those creative outpourings some people had in between yoga with Adrie…