Brexit page-turners are flying off the shelves

Titles by authors such as Fintan O’Toole, James O’Brien and Jonathan Coe confound bleak consumer trends

Books tackling Brexit may not qualify as escapist literature, yet a slew of new writing, fiction and non-fiction is proving British readers are looking in greater numbers for ways to understand the causes and outcomes of the country’s current strategic impasse.

Titles such as Fintan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, Tim Shipman’s Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem, and How to be Right … in a World Gone Wrong, the bestseller from radio presenter James O’Brien, are all confounding bleak consumer trends, as are novels such as Jonathan Coe’s Middle England. And coming soon is a long-anticipated follow-up to the popular 1982 novel A Very British Coup that will tackle the impact of Brexit head-on. Writer Chris Mullin’s sequel, to be published on 28 March – the day before the Brexit deadline – is called The Friends of Harry Perkins and is billed by publishers Scribner as “the definitive post-Brexit thriller”.

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‘The world is diminished by the death of Amos Oz, it has narrowed down’

The writer David Grossman pays tribute to his friend, the Israeli novelist and outspoken peace campaigner

The world has been “narrowed down” by the death of the Israeli literary giant Amos Oz, according to his close friend and fellow author David Grossman.

“There will not be another Amos Oz, there was only one like him. You can say this about every human being, of course, but there was something unique about Amos,” Grossman told the Observer.

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New Year honours list rewards terror attack responders

London and Manchester emergency workers recognised along with Twiggy, Margaret Atwood and Michael Palin

Dozens of emergency service workers have been recognised in a New Year honours list that highlights the extraordinary response to major terrorist incidents in London and Manchester.

Celebrities including the 1960s model Twiggy, who becomes a dame, and the comedian and TV presenter Michael Palin, who is knighted, are also garlanded in the 2019 list alongside the literary giants Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman.

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Barack Obama reveals his cultural highlights of 2018, from Roma to Zadie Smith

The former US president is still releasing his best-of lists, and 2018’s includes everyone from Lauren Groff to Nancy Wilson, via the Carters and The Death of Stalin

Barack Obama has continued his tradition of publishing end-of-year lists, compiling the books, songs and films that the former US president has most enjoyed over the passed 12 months, with Zadie Smith, Beyoncé and Jay Z’s Apeshit and Armando Iannucci’s political satire The Death of Stalin all included.

“As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favourite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists,” Obama wrote on Facebook, adding that the list included work that he found “thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved”. The lists – which started in 2015, while he was still in office – are meant to highlight work from famous and lesser-known writers, directors and musicians.

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Israeli novelist Amos Oz dies aged 79

The author of books including Black Box, A Tale of Love and Darkness and In the Land of Israel, has died from cancer

The esteemed Israeli novelist Amos Oz has died at the age of 79, from cancer.

The author of 18 books in Hebrew and a longtime candidate for the Nobel prize for literature, Oz was best known for novels including Black Box, In the Land of Israel and A Tale of Love and Darkness, his bestselling autobiographical novel. Much of his work, both fiction and non-fiction, explored kibbutz life and picked apart his characters’ often complex relationships with Israel and modern politics – reflective of his own.

Related: Amos Oz: ‘I love Israel, but I don’t like it very much’

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Spanish academic gets €1.5m EU grant to rescue 'women's writing'

Project to bring recognition to women between 1500 and 1780 who wrote popular texts dismissed as minor

A Spanish academic has embarked on a five-year quest to rescue the works of female writers from the margins of European thought and give them the recognition they have been denied for centuries.

Carme Font, a lecturer in English literature at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, has been awarded a €1.5m (£1.35m) grant by the European Research Council to scour libraries, archives and private collections in search of letters, poems and reflections written by women from 1500 to 1780.

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On the real Watership Down, rabbits are hard to come by

Numbers may be at an all time low as a new adaptation of the novel hits our TV screens

The real Watership Down is not hard to find.

In the introduction to his book, Richard Adams helpfully gives the Ordnance Survey map reference – sheet 174. Once located on paper, long-remembered names jump from the map: Nuthanger Farm, Ashley Warren and Honeycomb are all there. It was the multitude of rabbits found on this little square of England that inspired Adams to write Watership Down.

Related: Watership Down should be about death and destruction, not fluffy rabbits | Stephanie Merritt

Related: Watership Down: 'true meaning' revealed ahead of remake

Related: Is Watership Down really 'just a story about rabbits'? | Nicholas Lezard

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JK Rowling rejects former PA's claims as court case continues

Author issues statement saying she does not accept Amanda Donaldson’s claims

JK Rowling has said she does not accept claims made in court by her former personal assistant, who is accused of fraudulently using the author’s credit card for spending sprees.

The author took the unusual step of issuing the statement while Amanda Donaldson, 35, is appearing at Airdrie sheriff court in a civil case, accused of unauthorised spending and the taking of Harry Potter merchandise to a total value of almost £24,000.

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'We’ve informed you': New York Times defends running Alice Walker's David Icke recommendation

After outrage, Book Review editor Pamela Paul says it would not edit authors’ answers and ‘the public deserves to know’ if they hold ‘dangerous or immoral beliefs’

The editor of the New York Times Book Review has stressed that the paper does “not issue a verdict on people’s opinions” following the “outrage” that ensued after it ran an interview with Alice Walker, in which she recommended a book by an author who has been accused of antisemitism.

Walker, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Color Purple, cited the controversial British writer David Icke’s And the Truth Shall Set You Free when asked by the New York Times which books were on her nightstand. “In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about,” said Walker. “A curious person’s dream come true.”

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Simon Armitage wins Queen's gold medal for poetry 2018

The Huddersfield poet was praised for spinning ‘poems of emotional weight and musical grace from the fabric of our everyday lives’ by laureate Carol Ann Duffy

English poet and novelist Simon Armitage has been awarded the Queen’s gold medal for poetry for his body of work “giving voice to those rarely admitted into poetry, and extending an arm around the unheard and the dispossessed”.

The Huddersfield poet, who began writing poetry while working as a probation officer in Greater Manchester, has written 21 collections over his career, the most famous being Book of Matches, which features many poems included on the GCSE English literature syllabus. He has also translated multiple early English works including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and worked on several history documentaries for the BBC. Awarded a CBE in 2010 for his services to poetry, Armitage is currently professor of poetry at Oxford University and Leeds University, and previously at Sheffield.

Related: Poet laureate: the highest office in poetry | Simon Armitage

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JK Rowling generous but unapproachable, her ex-PA tells court

Former personal assistant Amanda Donaldson accused of fraudulently using author’s credit card

JK Rowling was a generous but unapproachable boss, according to a former personal assistant in court accused of fraudulently using the author’s credit card for spending sprees.

Amanda Donaldson, 35, was suspended and later dismissed in 2017 over alleged unauthorised spending and taking of Harry Potter merchandise to a total value of almost £24,000.

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Top 10 Irish science fiction authors

It might not be the first country you associate with the genre, but from Jonathan Swift to Flann O’Brien and beyond, the future’s always been there

To the uninitiated, the idea of Irish science fiction seems slightly odd; the country’s culture is generally assumed to be more invested in the past than the future, and to value the fantastic over the supposedly rational.

But it may not be quite as absurd a notion as it once was: Ireland is now as cosmopolitan as any other country in Europe; multinationals have established tech enclaves in incongruous rural areas, and Dublin’s economy is largely dependent on IT. I’ve recently put together an anthology for Tramp Press, A Brilliant Void, that proves the existence of Irish sci-fi centuries back. It has, I found, its own distinctive tenor – a kind of cautious optimism for the future, leavened with the cynical expectation that avaricious, unaccountable chancers will bring about disaster nonetheless.

Related: Top 10 books to help you survive the digital age

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Penguin Random House pledges £15,000 to diverse children's bookshop

Publisher says it hopes to help #ReadTheOnePercent pop-up in south London ‘smash its target’ of £30,000 in donations, which it is crowdfunding in order to become permanent

Penguin Random House has pledged £15,000 to south London’s #ReadtheOnePercent bookshop, which only stocks children’s books with characters from diverse backgrounds, praising it for playing “a critical role” in highlighting books that better reflect society.

Related: ‘Mum this is me!’: the pop-up bookshop that only sells diverse children's books

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Michelle Obama topples David Walliams to secure Christmas No 1

The former first lady’s memoir Becoming sold 92,000 copies last week – well ahead of Walliams, who was the bestselling author for the previous two years

Michelle Obama has unseated David Walliams as Britain’s Christmas favourite, with her memoir Becoming set to be the UK’s bestselling book during the festive period, after shifting 92,000 copies in the final shopping week before Christmas Day.

Christmas is a crucial period for UK booksellers, with the four weeks of December accounting for approximately 15% of annual book sales.

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Roald Dahl's war medals delivered to family, 73 years late

Twenty-eight years after his death, the author’s decorations, earned as an airman during the second world war, have been received by his widow Felicity

Twenty-eight years after he died, the medals Roald Dahl earned for his time as an RAF fighter pilot during the second world war have finally arrived with his family.

Dahl’s grandson, Ned Donovan, said that the medals had been delivered from the Ministry of Defence on Wednesday, and that he had given them to the author’s widow, Felicity Dahl, at her 80th birthday party. The medals – the 1939-1945 Star, for those who served overseas during the war, the Africa Star, the Defence Medal, for non-operational service, and the War Medal – arrived, 73 years late.

73 years late and 28 years after his death, my grandfather Roald’s World War II medals arrived in the post yesterday from the MoD. He never collected them at the time thanks to a bureaucratic mix-up. And so last night I gave them to my step-grandmother as a surprise. pic.twitter.com/nkyq9nZwz5

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The best recent science fiction and fantasy – review roundup

The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley; Splintered Suns by Michael Cobley; How Long ’til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin; North by Frank Owen and The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman

At the centre of Aliya Whiteley’s The Loosening Skin (Unsung Stories, £9.99) is an intriguing premise. In a world very much like our own, people shed their skins every seven years and, along with them, their pasts, feelings and associations: their old lives are, effectively, replaced. However, a new drug, Suscutin, allows users to maintain their skins and so retain their current life. Rose Allington, a former bodyguard for actor Max Black with whom she had a troubled love affair, has a rare medical condition that causes her to moult more often than average – so she undergoes rapid and regular emotional upheavals. When Max comes back into her life, wanting her to help him track down an old skin of his that has been stolen, Rose is forced to reassess everything. The Loosening Skin works as a quirky new weird thriller, but its triumph lies in the way Whiteley uses the metaphor of shedding skin to examine the tortured process of love and attachment.

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‘Mum this is me!’: the pop-up bookshop that only sells diverse children's books

#ReadTheOnePercent, run by publisher Knights Of, has reopened in south London for Christmas – and after selling out its stock, is now crowdfunding to become permanent

When Aimée Felone and David Stevens opened their pop-up children’s bookshop in Brixton in October, featuring only books with black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) protagonists, they had one reaction they weren’t prepared for: a customer burst into tears. “I went and asked her if she was OK,” says Stevens. “She said she’d never seen anything quite like it, she’d picked up six books in a row and they all had brown faces on. All I could say was, ‘I’m sorry it took so long.’”

Felone and Stevens, who have just launched a crowdfunding campaign to open a handful of inclusive pop-up bookshops around the UK and Ireland, aren’t usually in the retail business: they’re independent publishers. They decided to open their #ReadTheOnePercent shop in response to a damning report from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), which found that of more than 9,000 children’s books published in the UK in 2017, just 1% had a BAME main character.

Related: Only 1% of children's books have BAME main characters – UK study

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To Kill a Mockingbird hits Broadway after lawsuit over Aaron Sorkin’s script

The Social Network screenwriter’s take on Harper Lee’s novel had been opposed by her estate, and reports say portrayal of Atticus Finch has been softened

Litigation from the estate of Harper Lee has forced the producers of the Broadway adaption of To Kill a Mockingbird, which opens on Thursday, to change their portrayal of Lee’s iconic lawyer Atticus Finch as a man who drinks alcohol, keeps a gun and curses mildly.

Instead, the character played by actor Jeff Daniels is “as the estate wanted … a clean-living hero throughout, who is described in the play’s opening moments as the ‘most honest and decent person in Maycomb’”, according to the New York Times, which has seen previews of the much-anticipated production.

Calpurnia: Jem was stickin’ up for you and maybe a little bit me and you made him say he was sorry.

Atticus: I believe in being respectful.

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Fire and Fury wins ‘total loser’ Michael Wolff a place on authors’ rich list

White House exposé rubbished by Donald Trump earns royalties to rival the likes of perennial favourites such as James Patterson and JK Rowling

Runaway sales of White House exposé Fire and Fury have powered Michael Wolff into Forbes’s annual round-up of the world’s highest paid authors for the first time.

According to the business magazine, which bases its estimates on data from NPD BookScan as well as interviews with industry insiders, Fire and Fury sold 1.7m copies worldwide during its first three weeks on sale. Coupled with seven-figure advances for a sequel, and the sale of film and television rights, in total Forbes estimates that Wolff earned $13m (£10.2m) from June 2017 to June 2018, putting him in seventh position in its list of the book world’s top annual earners.

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Les Misérables with 'contemporary relevance' to air on BBC

Victor Hugo’s historical novel brought up to date in Andrew Davies adaptation

With social unrest brewing in France and Emmanuel Macron accused by protesters of being the “president of the rich”, the BBC is to air an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s historical novel Les Misérables, which the writer Andrew Davies says has been given a timely “contemporary relevance” by the injustices and divisions within society today.

The BBC has brought Hugo’s novel “right into the 21st century”, according to its director general, Tony Hall, with one of its most “inclusive casts” ever.

Related: Andrew Davies: my Les Misérables will be nothing like 'shoddy farrago' musical

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Gwendoline Riley's 'brutal' novel about toxic marriage wins Geoffrey Faber prize

With her novel First Love, the 39-year-old author joins eminent former winners including Seamus Heaney and Alice Oswald

Gwendoline Riley’s unsparing depiction of an abusive relationship in her novel First Love has won her the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize.

First Love, the English author’s fifth book, is an exploration of the power dynamics in romantic relationships, revealed through the unstable and toxic partnership of writer Neve and her husband Edwyn, whose self-pity and ego dominate their lives. In his review for the Observer, Stuart Evers called it “an uncomfortable book – one of naked truths, of unvarnished life, written in sentences that surprise in their collision of beauty and savagery. It shows a writer at the very height of her powers, grappling and snaring her themes into a singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart.”

Related: First Love by Gwendoline Riley review – miniaturism for existentialists

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Antarctic diary records horror at finding Captain Scott's body

Norwegian Tryggve Gran’s 1912 journal – sold for £150,000 – reveals ‘horrible nightmare’ of finding the bodies of the polar explorer and his companions

The haunting sledging journals of Tryggve Gran, in which the young Norwegian explorer details his discovery of the frozen body of Captain Scott in the Antarctic, have sold for £150,000.

Gran was part of the 11-man search party that set off from Cape Evans to find the missing Scott and his team on 29 October 1912. Scott had begun a second Antarctic expedition in June 1910, starting for the South Pole in October 1911 and making it on 17 January 1912, only to find they had been beaten to their goal by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who arrived a month earlier.

Related: Scott of the Antarctic: the lies that doomed his race to the pole

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An anti-capitalist hack for TV ads | Brief letters

Hope | Anti-capitalist tips | Richard Cooke | Seat offering | Meat allergy

In a desert of lunacy and lies, Monday’s Guardian was an oasis of honesty, humour and hope. Thank you.
Laurence Arnold
Stevenage, Hertfordshire

• Re “Use your TV remote” (How to be an everyday anti-capitalist, G2, 10 December), I record the TV programmes I want to watch and then fast-forward the adverts. This way, you do not have to hear or see them, apart from observing them whizzing past, and also gain about 12 minutes in every hour or so of screen time.
Susan Harvey
Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey

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Brazilian booksellers face wave of closures that leave sector in crisis

Recession and rising prices have left the book trade fighting for its life, with one publisher appealing to readers for help by buying books at Christmas

“These are dark days for the book in Brazil”, one of the country’s leading publishers has warned, after crises at the country’s two largest bookstore chains have left many worried that many towns may be left without a single bookstore.

After announcing the closure of 20 stores in October, book chain Saraiva announced in late November that it was filing for bankruptcy protection, citing a crisis in the publishing market that combined steady declines in the price of books with rising inflation. Rival chain Cultura has also filed a reorganisation plan to avoid bankruptcy this autumn. Brazil is in the middle of its worst recession in decades, with the October election of the far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro as the country’s next president sending ripples of fear through the country’s cultural community.

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Mars attacks! War of the Worlds restaged for 'fake news' era

New show links HG Wells’s sci-fi novel and Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation and explores climate of fear preceding the US presidential election

It is one of the most famous radio broadcasts of all time and turned its 23-year-old narrator-director, Orson Welles, into a household name. Welles was both celebrated as a genius and vilified as a prankster when his innovative dramatisation of HG Wells’s science fiction classic The War of the Worlds aired in 1938. The story was told through a series of news bulletins, interrupting a music programme, giving breathless reports about a Martian army invading the US. Listeners who tuned in midway believed it all to be true.

Or did they? A new theatre production from the British company Rhum and Clay will explore that notion of fear sweeping across America, and draw parallels between the climate of heightened fear in 1938 and the febrile run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

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Mars attacks! War of the Worlds restaged for 'fake news' era

New show links HG Wells’s sci-fi novel and Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation and explores climate of fear preceding the US presidential election

It is one of the most famous radio broadcasts of all time and turned its 23-year-old narrator-director, Orson Welles, into a household name. Welles was both celebrated as a genius and vilified as a prankster when his innovative dramatisation of HG Wells’s science fiction classic The War of the Worlds aired in 1938. The story was told through a series of news bulletins, interrupting a music programme, giving breathless reports about a Martian army invading the US. Listeners who tuned in midway believed it all to be true.

Or did they? A new theatre production from the British company Rhum and Clay will explore that notion of fear sweeping across America, and draw parallels between the climate of heightened fear in 1938 and the febrile run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

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John le Carré to tackle 'division and rage' of 2018 in new novel

Agent Running in the Field, the 87-year-old author’s 25th novel, will be set in London and published in October 2019

John le Carré is set to confront “the division and rage at the heart of our modern world” in a newnovel set in London in 2018 that will be published next year.

Agent Running in the Field follows a 26-year-old “solitary” man who, “in a desperate attempt to resist the new political turbulence swirling around him, makes connections that will take him down a very dangerous path”, according to publisher Viking.

Related: Tinker, tailor, writer, spy: the many lives of John le Carré, in his own words

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What Not: lost feminist novel that anticipated Brave New World finally finds its time

Rose Macaulay’s What Not, which features a sinister Ministry of Brains, is little known, but there are claims it influenced both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell

A forgotten feminist dystopian novel, a story of eugenics and newspaper manipulation that is believed to have influenced Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, is coming back into print for the first time in a century, complete with pages that were suppressed in 1918.

Rose Macaulay’s What Not was first published 100 years ago, but swiftly withdrawn over potentially libellous passages. Once it was reissued in 1919, it had “lost its momentum” and has been out of print ever since, according to independent publisher Handheld Press, which will republish the novel in March 2019.

Huxley’s Alpha Double plus to Epsilon Minus caste system appears to have sprung straight from Macaulay’s grading system

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What Not: lost feminist novel that anticipated Brave New World finally finds its time

Rose Macaulay’s What Not, which features a sinister Ministry of Brains, is little known, but there are claims it influenced both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell

A forgotten feminist dystopian novel, a story of eugenics and newspaper manipulation that is believed to have influenced Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, is coming back into print for the first time in a century, complete with pages that were suppressed in 1918.

Rose Macaulay’s What Not was first published 100 years ago, but swiftly withdrawn over potentially libellous passages. Once it was reissued in 1919, it had “lost its momentum” and has been out of print ever since, according to independent publisher Handheld Press, which will republish the novel in March 2019.

Huxley’s Alpha Double plus to Epsilon Minus caste system appears to have sprung straight from Macaulay’s grading system

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David Walliams calls for 'safeguarding' of libraries

Bestselling author tells Radio Times he would improve access to reading if he were prime minister

David Walliams, the comedian turned bestselling children’s author, has called for the “safeguarding” of libraries.

Walliams, author of Mr Stink and Gangsta Granny, said that “access to reading” should be improved.

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Watership Down: 'true meaning' revealed ahead of remake

Readers thought story was cryptic allegory, but its creator was firm: ‘It’s just a story about rabbits’

It has been endlessly picked apart and analysed and described as an allegory for both communism and Christianity but the daughters of Richard Adams have revealed the true meaning of Watership Down. “It’s just a story about rabbits.”

Rosamond and Juliet, to whom the story was first told to keep them quiet in the car, have spoken ahead of a two-part animation to be shown on BBC1 over Christmas.

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Literary agent ordered to pay $500,000 to Australian author Kate Morton after lawsuit loss

Selwa Anthony had sued the bestselling writer, claiming she was entitled to 15% commission on all royalties

Internationally bestselling Australian author Kate Morton has fended off a lawsuit by her former literary agent, who instead has to pay the writer more than $500,000.

Selwa Anthony sued the author in the New South Wales supreme court, claiming she was entitled to be paid 15% commission on all royalties earned from Morton’s first six published books for the life of each work.

Related: 'It's a movement': how the Barefoot Investor changed what's in our wallets

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The Tattooist of Auschwitz attacked as inauthentic by camp memorial centre

Report for the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre claims inaccuracies in Heather Morris’s hit novel ‘blur the authenticity’ of the true history

Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz, the story of how Slovakian Jew Lale Sokolov fell in love with a girl he was tattooing at the concentration camp, has been one of the year’s bestselling novels. Its cover proclaims that it is “based on the powerful true story of love and survival”; inside, its publisher notes that “every reasonable attempt to verify the facts against available documentation has been made”. But a detailed broadside from the Auschwitz Memorial has disputed this, claiming that “the book contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements”.

The report from Wanda Witek-Malicka of the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre lays out concerns that the book’s claims of factual authenticity will lead readers to treat it as “a source of knowledge and imagination about the reality of life” in the camp.

The number of different errors in the book can sometimes create more confusion than understanding

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Nearly 130 public libraries closed across Britain in the last year

Services continue to be targets for local authority budget cuts, with remaining services increasingly reliant on voluntary staff

Almost 130 public libraries have closed in the last year in Britain while an extra 3,000 volunteers have been brought in to run remaining services, as the decade’s austerity pressures see local authorities continuing to apply swingeing cuts to budgets.

The annual survey of British libraries by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) has revealed a similar picture each year since 2010, with the number of branches and paid staff falling every year.

Related: Do libraries run by volunteers check out?

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JK Rowling's former PA is 'good liar', author's husband tells court

Amanda Donaldson is accused of fraudulently using the Harry Potter author’s credit card to go on spending sprees

A former personal assistant of JK Rowling who is accused of fraudulently using the author’s credit card to go on spending sprees was a “good liar”, Rowling’s husband has told a court.

Dr Neil Murray said Amanda Donaldson was employed to organise his wife’s business and professional matters.

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Prize-nominated poet's debut cancelled as plagiarism accusations build

Several authors have accused Ailey O’Toole of using their poems to write her own, including the Pushcart-nominated Gun Metal

A prize-nominated poet’s debut collection has been cancelled and her work removed from online publications after multiple writers accused her of plagiarising their work.

On Saturday, Ailey O’Toole, an American poet who was nominated for a Pushcart prize for the poem Gun Metal, was publicly accused by Rachel McKibbens of taking lines from her poem, three strikes, and using them in Gun Metal. McKibbens’ poem, which draws on her childhood trauma, reads: “Hell-spangled girl / spitting teeth into the sink, / I’d trace the broken / landscape of my body / & find God / within myself.” O’Toole’s Gun Metal reads: “Ramshackle / girl spitting teeth / in the sink. I trace the / foreign topography of / my body, find God / in my skin.”

Related: 'Plagiarists never do it once': meet the sleuth tracking down the poetry cheats

We are still processing the recent events but please know we have taken all necessary steps to rectify the recent disturbing developments. Please know we do NOT accept or tolerate plagiarism. We are hurt, we feel the pain & anger of those who have had work stolen.

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'Axe the reading tax': book industry demands end to VAT on ebooks

Following EU directive that allows governments to waive duty on digital publications, calls grow for the UK to end ‘illogical and unfair’ levy

The UK government is being urged to axe the “illogical and unfair” 20% tax currently imposed on ebooks, while print books remain exempt, after European legislation cleared the way for this to happen.

The new legislation, which came into force on Tuesday, allows member states to reduce or do away with VAT on digital publications such as ebooks, audiobooks, journals and newspaper subscriptions. France, Italy and Iceland have already declared they will lower their taxes on digital publications.

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Boys' love to Pokémon: British Museum to host major show on manga

Exhibition will be largest on the comic books and graphic novels ever held outside Japan

Beautiful, heart-fluttering gay vampires are coming to the British Museum next year, possibly for the first time, in the largest ever exhibition of manga ever held outside Japan.

The museum on Wednesday announced details of a major show devoted to Japanese comic books and graphic novels to be staged in its huge temporary exhibitions space.

Related: Manga comics: where to start

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New York's Strand bookshop begs to avoid official landmarking

Much-loved retailer boasting ‘18 miles of books’ says city’s plans to legally recognise its status would entail expenses that might kill the business

New York City’s most celebrated bookshop, the Strand, is a cultural landmark for locals and tourists alike, promising “18 miles of books” to its customers since 1927. But now the shop is battling attempts to make its landmark status official, saying the designation could destroy it.

Run by three generations of the Bass family since it opened, the shop at the corner of 12th Street and Broadway is the only survivor of what was once known as “Book Row”, home to 48 booksellers in the 1920s. New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is keen to declare the Strand a city landmark, describing it as “a centre of literary life in Lower Manhattan” and “an internationally recognised bookstore and destination”. But at a public hearing on Tuesday, owner Nancy Bass Wyden begged the commission to reconsider.

Related: A story of survival: New York’s last remaining independent bookshops

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Unseen Rupert Brooke letter to 'lovelorn' admirer to be sold

Correspondence from 1907 sees the 19-year-old poet advising college friend that ‘I am sorry you have placed me on a pedestal’

An unpublished letter in which a young Rupert Brooke advises his lovelorn friend Ernst Goldschmidt to not “place … me on a pedestal”, has been found in Goldschmidt’s archives, bundled together with two unsent letters from Goldschmidt in which he tries to lay out his feelings for the poet.

Brooke was 19 when he wrote to Goldschmidt on 25 March 1907, telling him that “I am sorry you have ‘built an altar in my heart’, and placed me on a pedestal … It is a mistake I made myself, once. Life is one of those ridiculous jests of which one never sees the point – until it is too late, and one does not appreciate the humour.”

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Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2018: Gerald Murnane wins for 'exquisite' novel

Border Districts described as ‘crowning achievement of a singular literary career’, beating works by Peter Carey and Richard Flanagan

Gerald Murnane has beaten Peter Carey, Richard Flanagan, Kim Scott and Michelle de Kretser to win $80,000 for his novel Border Districts in the fiction category at the 2018 Prime Minister’s Literary awards.

Judged by panel, the awards are among the most prestigious in Australia and the richest, with $600,000 in total prize money awarded across six categories, including $5,000 for each of the 30 shortlisted authors.

Related: 'It's uncanny': acclaim at last for Gerald Murnane, lost genius of Australian letters

Related: Gerald Murnane: one of Australia's greatest writers you may never have heard of

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Rare Leonardo da Vinci notebook to go on show at British Library

Bill Gates to lend notebook in 2019 on 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death

Bill Gates is to lend the British Library a rare Leonardo da Vinci notebook that he bought for more than $30m (£23.5m) in 1994 and that was for centuries owned by an English aristocratic family.

The loan means the notebook, the Codex Leicester, can be shown alongside two other British-owned Leonardo notebooks in the UK for the first time.

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André Aciman announces sequel to Call Me By Your Name

Author of the novel behind Oscar-winning romance says he will return to story of Elio and Oliver, after the director revealed his own plans for a follow-up film

André Aciman has revealed that he is writing a sequel to his bestselling novel Call Me By Your Name, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

A coming-of-age story detailing the poignant summer romance between teenager Elio and the slightly older Oliver, a graduate student who visits Elio’s family home in Italy, Aciman’s 2007 novel was adapted into a film last year. While the film ends with the pair still young, the novel gives a glimpse into Elio and Oliver’s future, showing a meeting between the lovers 20 years after their short affair.

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James Frey wins bad sex in fiction award for 'dubious' Katerina

US author’s ‘fictional retelling’ of a Paris love affair is the winner from all-male shortlist

Years after gaining notoriety for embellishing parts of his memoir A Million Little Pieces, the US author James Frey has a new notch in his bedpost: the 2018 bad sex in fiction award.

Seeing off competition from an all-male shortlist that included Haruki Murakami and the Man Booker prize-nominated Gerard Woodward, Frey won for his novel Katerina, a “fictional retelling” of a love affair the author started while on a hedonistic trip to France in the 1990s. The story follows Jay, a young American would-be writer, as he drinks and bonks his way around Paris, particularly with a Norwegian model named Katerina.

Related: Katerina by James Frey review – a glorification of masculine privilege

Related: Katerina by James Frey – digested read

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GP’s diary of the absurd set to be surprise festive hit

A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book by Philip Rhys Evans is on its way to be this year’s novelty bestseller

After a long career as a Suffolk GP, Dr Philip Rhys Evans may well be astonished to find himself lined up as a surprise literary hit this winter. But a short book compiled by the now-retired doctor with his wife Christine detailing the funny, bizarre and poignant situations he has encountered over his many years in practice is now a novelty Christmas title attracting glowing reviews.

Dr Evans’ A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book features a succession of anecdotes, letters and stories of unintended double meanings, and was picked up by the independent literary magazine Slightly Foxed to be published in a small print run for subscribers. Demand grew through word of mouth and the title was supplied to selected book shops, making it the latest in a tradition of unexpected seasonal successes.

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At last, a partner for the Snowman who has melted hearts for 40 years

Illustrators including Quentin Blake and Shirley Hughes celebrate the Raymond Briggs Christmas classic – and one adds a touch of romance

It is a magical story that has been synonymous with Christmas since it was first published 40 years ago. Now, new illustrations of The Snowman will be shown for the first time at an exhibition paying tribute to the book’s creator, Raymond Briggs, 84.

Nine leading British children’s illustrators – Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes, Helen Oxenbury, Chris Riddell, John Burningham, Posy Simmonds, Andy Stanton, Adam Hargreaves and Ed Vere – have all drawn scenes from The Snowman in their own styles to celebrate the anniversary of his original artwork.

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Guardian best books of 2018: across fiction, politics, food and more

From Brexit satires to time-travelling murder mysteries and a former first lady’s wry observations on life in the White House, our critics pick the best novels, poetry, sports and children’s books of the year

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