Through gilets jaunes, strikes and Covid, Paris's 400-year-old book stalls fight to survive

With passing trade hit hard by the pandemic, the booksellers on the banks of the Seine are struggling

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Usually, Sundays are good days for the bouquinistes. Legions of strollers – tourists, out-of-towners, Parisians – throng the banks of the Seine, and the open-air booksellers whose green boxes have lined the quays for 400-odd years do good business.

One recent Sunday, though, Jérôme Callais made €32. And there was a day that week when he made €4: a single paperback, he can’t even recall which. It has not, Callais said, sheltering from driving rain on an all but deserted Quai de Conti, been easy.

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‘I’m more optimistic’: poet laureate Simon Armitage tells of Britain’s great ordeal

The writer has blended music, dance and words into a film tracing the pandemic

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How to tell millions of individual stories? Or represent the pain and anxiety of a pandemic to audiences of the future? Perhaps it takes a national poet to attempt it.

Speaking exclusively to the Observer, Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, and his long-time collaborator, the award-winning British filmmaker Brian Hill, have revealed they are quietly tackling this challenge together.

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In a year of forced solitude, Barcelona rediscovers the companionship of books

Independent bookshops are thriving in the Catalan city where people view them as havens

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Throughout the pandemic, technology has been saving our jobs and our sanity – but in Barcelona the lockdowns have led to the revival of one of humanity’s simplest and most enduring inventions: the book.

The city’s booksellers are reporting a boom in sales and, against all odds, new bookshops have opened.

Related: A new website for independent bookshops is just what the industry needs | Simon Jenkins

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Barry Lopez, award-winning Arctic Dreams author, has died aged 75

Lopez, who wrote nearly 20 books on natural history, died in Oregon after a years-long struggle with prostate cancer

Barry Lopez, an award-winning American writer who tried to tighten the bonds between people and place by describing the landscapes he saw in 50 years of travel, has died. He was 75.

Lopez died in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday after a years-long struggle with prostate cancer, his family said.

Related: Horizon by Barry Lopez review – nature in the raw

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Alan Bennett’s 2020 diary reveals growing health struggles

At 86, the playwright says arthritis is increasingly restrictive, but also finds room for satirical jabs at Boris Johnson’s government and everyday comedy

Alan Bennett’s annual chronicling of his life for the London Review of Books this year reveals the beloved author in worsening health as he confronts isolation in the pandemic.

Bennett admits in the diary, published on Wednesday in the LRB, that he has found himself dwelling on his “physical incapacity” over the last 12 months. The 86-year-old suffers from arthritis, and the fact he can no longer ride his bike “has to some extent meant farewell to the health that went with it, and my life is increasingly medicated”, he writes, revealing a longing for a stairlift that will never be realised “for aesthetic reasons”.

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Albrecht Dürer may not have written Lament on Luther, finds study

Research suggests elegy on arrest of Protestant reformer was the work not of the German artist but of a monk

It has been described as “one of the greatest spontaneous prayers in world literature”, but Albrecht Dürer’s elegy on the arrest of Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, may not have been written by the German painter, printmaker and writer after all, research suggests.

Considered one of Dürer’s best-known writings, the Lament on Luther could instead have been the work of a contemporary monk that was slipped into the artist’s diary, possibly for political reasons, according to what the National Gallery describes as “very convincing evidence”.

Dürer’s Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist, the Credit Suisse exhibition, runs from 6 March to 13 June.

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Richard Osman becomes first debut author to land Christmas No 1

The Thursday Murder Club sees off titles by Barack Obama and David Walliams in chaotic week for Britain’s book trade

Richard Osman’s cosy mystery about a group of elderly sleuths, The Thursday Murder Club, has become the first debut novel ever to become the Christmas No 1, selling a remarkable 134,514 copies in seven days.

The Pointless presenter’s novel beat Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land to the Christmas top spot, the sales monitor Nielsen BookScan said on Tuesday. Osman’s novel has flown off shelves since its publication in September and sold more than twice the number of copies of Obama’s memoirs over the past week.

Related: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman review – cosy crime caper

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Lawsuit over 'warmer' Sherlock depicted in Enola Holmes dismissed

Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate had sued makers of Enola Holmes for showing a humane side to the detective only visible in stories still protected under US law

The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and Netflix have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the author’s estate, which alleged that the film Enola Holmes infringed copyright by depicting a warmer and more emotional version of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle died in 1930, and while the majority of his writing is in the public domain, 10 of his stories about the famous detective remain under copyright in the US. In the UK, where copyright lasts for 70 years after an author’s death, all Holmes stories are out of copyright.

Related: The curious case of Sherlock Holmes' evolving emotions

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Pioneering fairytale author Madame d'Aulnoy back in print after centuries

The Island of Happiness, by the French writer who coined the term ‘fairytales’, to include first English translation of 300-year-old story

A story by Madame d’Aulnoy, the 17th-century French writer who coined the term “fairytales”, is to be published in English for the first time in more than 300 years, telling of a woman whose beauty is so great it slays her lovers by the hundreds.

Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, known as Madame or Countess d’Aulnoy, invented the term “conte de fée” or fairytale, when she published her major collection of them in 1697-98. Unlike her contemporary Charles Perrault, or later authors such as Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, today her work rarely appears outside anthologies.

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‘Naked and starving’: letters tell how English paupers fought for rights 200 years ago

Appeals to parish overseers show how penniless 19th-century families were ‘masters’ at navigating Old English Poor Law

They were destitute, their children were starving and their short, pitiful lives were often marred by heartbreak and suffering. But they knew that, morally, they had rights, and they understood how to make their voices heard.

Now, previously unpublished letters of penniless and disabled paupers living in the early 19th century reveal the sophisticated and powerful rhetoric they used to secure regular welfare payments from parish authorities, despite being barely able to read and write.

Related: Ex-homelessness tsar launches food appeal and urges 'Beveridge moment'

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David Constantine wins Queen's gold medal for poetry

Poet laureate Simon Armitage, a previous winner, praised the humanity of the author’s work ‘noticing and detailing the ways of the world’

The Queen’s gold medal for poetry has been awarded to David Constantine, a “long overdue” prize for a writer praised by the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, for his “humane” writing.

Constantine is the 51st recipient of an award for excellence in poetry that dates back to 1933, and includes Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and WH Auden among its former recipients. A poet, translator and novelist, Constantine published his first collection, A Brightness to Cast Shadows, in 1980. His 11th, Belongings, was published in October.

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Paperchase removes card with orphan joke after protest from Lemn Sissay

After the poet joined others voicing dismay at Christmas card ‘punching down’ at children in care, the stationery chain has apologised and withdrawn it

Paperchase has removed a card that mocked foster children from sale after the award-winning poet Lemn Sissay accused the chain of “punching down” and treating children in care as the butt of a joke.

The card, which depicts a mother on the phone near a child who has spilt some milk, saying “Is this the orphanage? Right, I want a f*cking refund …”, was first highlighted on Tuesday by Sophia Alexandra Hall, a care leaver who wrote of her journey to Oxford University in the Guardian. “Me: minding my business in a shop looking for Christmas cards,” Hall wrote on Twitter. “Shop: Merry Christmas here’s an orphan joke.”

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Unseen Shirley Jackson story to be published

Adventure on a Bad Night, in which a shopping trip unpicks layers of prejudice, was written in 1944 and rediscovered by the son of a writer fascinated by ‘the possibility of evil’

A “lost” story by Shirley Jackson, in which the author of The Haunting of Hill House shows a microcosm of the racism and sexism in US society through a dissatisfied woman’s trip to a corner shop, is being published for the first time.

Adventure on a Bad Night follows Vivien as she goes out for an evening walk, leaving her husband George, and the monotony of her life, behind for a moment. “If she left right away she could stay out in the air for 20 minutes or so … before the night started being tomorrow morning, with breakfast and dusting and the telephone.” While out, she meets a pregnant immigrant who is being verbally abused by a shop clerk after asking for help. “I know that kind,” the clerk tells Vivien. “You think they can’t understand a word, but you say to them ‘Sure I’ll do it for you’ and they understand right off. All I do is yell at them till they go away.”

The story drips with tension from the first sentence onward, and ends with a beginning

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Simone de Beauvoir's 'remarkable' letters to Violette Leduc sold at auction

Sotheby’s, which sold the 297 letters, says they reveal ‘a complex and ambiguous relationship where unrequited passion and mistrust mingle’

Almost 300 letters, mostly unpublished, from the influential feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir to the French novelist Violette Leduc, including The Second Sex author’s rejection of her friend’s romantic advances, have sold for €56,700 (£51,500).

Sent between 1945 to a month before Leduc’s death in 1972, the 297 letters reveal the intense friendship between the two women, with Beauvoir serving as an editor and source of unwavering support for Leduc, who she once called “the most interesting woman I know” and drew on her for her analysis of lesbianism in The Second Sex. Despite counting Jean Genet and Albert Camus among her fans, Leduc did not gain fame until the final years of her life, with her frank depiction of lesbian sex regarded as unacceptable for much of her career.

Related: Did Simone de Beauvoir's open 'marriage' make her happy?

Related: Violette Leduc: the great French feminist writer we need to remember

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Julie Burchill's publisher cancels book contract over Islam tweets

Author’s comments ‘crossed a line with regard to race and religion’, says Little, Brown

The journalist Julie Burchill has had a book contract cancelled after her publisher said she “crossed a line” with her Islamophobic comments on Twitter.

Burchill’s publisher, the Hachette imprint Little, Brown, said it had decided not to publish Welcome to the Woke Trials because she had used indefensible language when communicating with the journalist Ash Sarkar.

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'Titan of English literature': tributes flow for John le Carré

British novelist hailed a mentor, inspiration and ‘humanitarian spirit’ by literary figures following his death

• John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, dies aged 89

Writers, actors and directors paid tribute to John le Carré, author of thrilling literary spy novels, following his death from pneumonia aged 89.

Le Carré’s death was announced late on Sunday by his longtime agent Jonny Geller, CEO of the Curtis Brown Literary Agency, who described the novelist as “an undisputed giant of English literature” who “defined the cold war era and fearlessly spoke truth to power in the decades that followed.

Related: John le Carré obituary

“By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.”

John Le Carré, you were not only a great writer, but a visionary. Enjoy your new home #Rip pic.twitter.com/8L1FWEPhkD

So sad to hear of the death of John Le Carré. Just the finest, wisest storyteller we had. What an extraordinary career. Thank you for a lifetime of tales. https://t.co/0uym2utu4E

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John le Carré: a life in pictures

British author, best known for spy-thriller novels set during the cold war, dies aged 89

• John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, dies aged 89

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John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, dies aged 89

Thriller writer most famous for stories of complex cold war intrigue began his career as a real-life spy in postwar Europe

• Tinker, tailor, writer, spy: the many lives of John le Carré, in his own words
• Interview: ‘My ties to England have loosened’

John le Carré, who forged thrillers from equal parts of adventure, moral courage and literary flair, has died aged 89.

Le Carré explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.

Related: 'My ties to England have loosened': John le Carré on Britain, Boris and Brexit

Related: ‘He's very sexy’: Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale and other actors on le Carré

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New Batman will be black, DC Comics announces

Tim Fox will take up the cowl in new series written by 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley

The next hero to don Batman’s cowl will be a black man, named Tim Fox, DC Comics has revealed.

The identity of the new Batman, estranged son of Bruce Wayne’s business manager Lucius Fox, was announced by the comics publisher on Thursday. The new series will be written by John Ridley, the screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave, with art by Nick Derington and Laura Braga. It is set in a future Gotham City controlled by the villainous Magistrate, where all masked vigilantes are outlawed and Batman has been killed. Fox, as a new Batman, will rise up to save the day.

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Édouard Louis ‘in very bad way’ after man accused of his rape has charge dropped

Friends say Louis, who recounted the attack in his acclaimed book History of Violence, ‘traumatised again’ after trial that dismissed sexual assault claim

Friends of French writer Édouard Louis say he is in a “very bad way” after the man he accused of raping him eight years ago, the subject of his bestselling book History of Violence, was found not guilty of the crime last week.

Related: Édouard Louis: 'I want to be a writer of violence. The more you talk about it, the more you can undo it'

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning letter describing lonely quarantine up for sale

Auctioneers say 1839 letter to her cousin bemoaning isolation in Torquay, with visitors ‘a thing forbidden’, is very apt reading this year

Almost 200 years ago, the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett – now best known by her married name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning – was bemoaning the loneliness of self-isolation, in a letter to her cousin that is now up for auction.

As the people of the UK continue to sit out the coronavirus pandemic in their homes, the three-page missive, due to be sold at Bonhams in London next week, sees Barrett describing a period that lasted for weeks on end, as a result of what appears to have been ulcerative tuberculosis. After falling ill, she left London for Torquay’s sea air in August 1838, writing to her cousin and friend John Kenyon about her lonely life on 10 June 1839.

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Evaristo says 'powerful statement' to be first black female head of UK drama school

Author hopes to inspire students of colour as Rose Bruford college appoints her as president

Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo has praised her former college for making an “important statement” by installing her as the UK’s first ever black female president of a major drama school.

Evaristo will take up the ceremonial role at Rose Bruford college, which the author attended four decades ago, and she hopes to be an inspiration for young students of colour who, like her in the 80s, want to break into the cultural sector.

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Prime Minister's Literary awards: Tara June Winch wins in record-breaking year for Indigenous work

Winch becomes the first Indigenous author to win both Australia’s major writing prizes in the same year for her novel the Yield

Tara June Winch has become the first Indigenous Australian to win both of Australia’s major writing prizes in a year, taking out the $80,000 fiction category for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary award on Thursday after winning the $60,000 Miles Franklin in July.

This year’s awards, announced on Thursday, included a record showing for Indigenous writers and writers of colour, with the Gay’wu Group of Women winning the non-fiction category for Songspirals; the Darug duo of Jasmine Seymour and Leanne Mulgo Watson winning in the children’s category for Cooee Mittigar; and Omar Sakr becoming the first Arab Australian Muslim poet to be shortlisted – and then to win – in the poetry category for his book the Lost Arabs.

I didn't get any sleep last night. In 24hrs I find out whether I won an $80,000 award, the biggest poetry prize in the country. They don't let the winner know in advance, so there's a genuine chance I won. I feel sick. It's the difference between being able to own a home and not.

Related: ‘I had to be manic’: Tara June Winch on her unmissable new novel – and surviving Andrew Bolt

Sorry the livestream has dropped out on the #PMLitAwards, we are working to fix it and bring you the rest of the awards.

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Isaac Newton notes almost destroyed by dog sell for £380,000

Scientist’s occult investigations into the Great Pyramid of Egypt, dating from the 1680s, are believed to have been burned when his dog Diamond upset a candle

A collection of unpublished, burnt notes by Isaac Newton, in which the scientist attempts to unlock secret codes he believed were hidden in the measurements of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, have sold at auction for £378,000.

The “exceptionally rare” set of papers, which date to the 1680s, were almost destroyed by Newton’s dog Diamond, who, legend has it, jumped on a table and upset a candle, setting them on fire. Scorched as they are, they reveal Newton’s fascination for alchemy, showing the scientist comparing the external dimensions of the pyramid, the lengths of its tunnels, heights of its chambers and sizes of its bricks, as he attempts to prove they had all been calculated from a common unit of measurement: the royal cubit.

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'Do we really need it?' Council leader questions library service after months of closure

The West Midlands borough’s seven libraries have not resumed service after the November lockdown and Mike Bird has provoked fury by suggesting they may not

Walsall’s council leader has been asked to retract comments he made about the region’s libraries, closed for much of the year due to the coronavirus, of which he said: “I’m a firm believer that if we haven’t used something for the past four or five months, do we really need it?”

Walsall’s seven libraries operated a remote service from July until England’s second lockdown began on 5 November. The Black Country borough is the only one in the region to have operated no library service during the lockdown, and when it lifted on 2 December, Walsall’s libraries remained closed, even though libraries are allowed to be open in tier 3 regions as an essential service.

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Questions raised over charity seeking to buy JRR Tolkien's Oxford house

Project backed by Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman hopes to raise £4.5m for the purchase, but there are concerns about intentions of Christian groups involved

A charity backed by celebrities including Ian McKellen that is seeking to raise £4.5m to purchase JRR Tolkien’s former home, has denied that the project will be focused on the author’s faith in relation to his works, after concerns were raised about the founders’ intentions.

Project Northmoor was launched last week with support from figures including McKellen, who plays Gandalf in the films of Tolkien’s fantasy novels, and Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo Baggins. It is not backed by the Tolkien estate, which declined to comment on the project when approached by the Guardian.

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Bad sex award cancelled as public exposed to ‘too many bad things in 2020’

Prize for ‘unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in sound literary novels’ will resume in 2021

Novelists who have strayed into the more intimate realms in their recent writing will have breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday after the Literary Review announced it had cancelled this year’s Bad sex in fiction awards.

The prize was set up in 1993 by Auberon Waugh, with the intention of “gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels”. Last year it was jointly won by Didier Decoin for The Office of Gardens and Ponds, which included the passage: “Miyuki felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws”, and John Harvey for Pax, in which the characters “embraced as if with violent holding they could weld the two of them one”.

Related: ‘Mouthful by mouthful’: the 2019 Bad sex award in quotes

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Nobel literature prize winner Louise Glück to publish new poetry in 2021

The poet, whose acceptance speech will also be released on Monday, will publish Winter Recipes from the Collective in 2021

Nobel laureate Louise Glück is set to publish her first poetry collection in seven years in 2021 – her first since becoming the 16th female winner of the literature prize.

Glück won the 2020 Nobel prize in October, with the judging committee citing her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. The 77-year-old is the author of 12 books of poems and two collections of essays, and has previously won the Pulitzer prize, the National Book Award, the National Humanities medal and the gold medal for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Related: Louise Glück: where to start with an extraordinary Nobel winner

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No buts: Keir Starmer did not inspire Helen Fielding's Mark Darcy

Author lays rumour to rest that her Bridget Jones character was based on the Labour leader

It has been one of the more intriguing rumours about the leader of the opposition, that Keir Starmer was the inspiration for Mark Darcy, the buttoned-up lawyer who battled with the rather more open-shirted Daniel Cleaver for Bridget Jones’s heart.

Now Helen Fielding, the author of the Bridget Jones books, has finally laid the matter to rest. Darcy is not in fact based on the Labour leader, she insisted, though she thinks they are very similar.

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Roald Dahl's family apologises for his antisemitism

Statement on the author’s official website says his views caused ‘lasting and understandable hurt’

The family of Roald Dahl has apologised for his antisemitism in a statement buried deep in the author’s official website.

Dahl, who died 30 years ago, is described on the site as “the world’s No 1 storyteller”, whose books – including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG – have entranced children since the 1960s.

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The book of love: 400-year-old tome of John Donne’s poems is unveiled

Handwritten volume that gives new clues to the poet’s work will be displayed online after being acquired by the British Library

John Donne is hailed as one of the greatest writers in the English canon, the author of exquisite love poetry and magnificent prose that has entered everyday language. To his 17th-century contemporaries, he was “the best in this kinde, that ever this Kingdome hath yet seene”.

Now a bound volume of more than 400 gilt-edged pages filled with 131 of his poems has been saved for the nation after being acquired by the British Library. Dr Alexander Lock, curator of modern archives and manuscripts, told the Observer: “It’s a manuscript of considerable literary importance, a new substantial work of Donne’s poetry that has not yet been studied.”

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Ian Rankin to complete William McIlvanney’s final novel The Dark Remains

Due out next year, the novel will see the Rebus creator fill out notes for another Laidlaw mystery left by the revered Scottish crime writer on his death in 2015

Ian Rankin has spent most of lockdown writing a novel – but it isn’t a new Rebus. Instead, the Scottish writer has been putting the finishing touches to a handwritten manuscript left by the late William McIlvanney, the so-called godfather of “tartan noir” and author of the Laidlaw detective books.

McIlvanney died in 2015, at the age of 79, leaving behind a trilogy of novels that Val McDermid says “changed the face of Scottish fiction”. The manuscript of The Dark Remains was found by his widow Siobhan Lynch among his papers. Set in October 1972, it was intended to be a prequel to the author’s hardbitten, Glasgow-set detective novels featuring Jack Laidlaw, about his first case.

Related: My hero: William McIlvanney by Ian Rankin

Related: Top 10 Scottish crime novels

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UK’s public libraries record another year of cuts, with yet more on the way

Falls in funding were matched by drops in borrowing, with budgets for next year set to fall by an average of 14%

The struggles of the UK’s public library service continue apace, with total funding for libraries in Britain down by nearly £20m in the year to March, immediately before the lockdown that saw libraries handling a rapid increase in demand for their services, which were eventually deemed essential by the government.

Annual figures from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) show that the number of books borrowed from libraries in the year to March 2020 – before the pandemic closed branches – fell by almost 9m year on year, to 166m. Public funding also fell by almost £20m, to £725m. In 2010, it had topped £1bn.

Related: Why lockdown was the plot twist that libraries needed | Krystal Vittles

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Russian doping whistleblower wins William Hill Sports Book of Year

• Mastermind of Russia state-sponsored doping wins prize
• Grigory Rodchenkov book praised for ‘honesty and bravery’

The extraordinary autobiography of the doping mastermind who helped Russia cheat their way to Olympic glory before fleeing Moscow in fear of his life has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.

Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, whose tell-all book, The Rodchenkov Affair: How I Brought Down Putin’s Secret Doping Empire, was unable to collect the £30,000 first prize as he is still in a witness protection scheme in the US.

Related: ‘The Kremlin wants me dead’: Russia's sports doping whistleblower speaks out

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Campaign to buy JRR Tolkien's house backed by Lord of the Rings actors

Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman support £4.5m crowdfunding campaign to turn the Oxford home where Tolkien wrote his most famous books into a museum

A quest to save the home of JRR Tolkien has begun, with Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins – or at least their earthly counterparts – joining the bid to turn the house where he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings into a museum.

Tolkien and his family moved into 20 Northmoor Road in Oxford in 1930, and lived there for 17 years while he was professor of Anglo-Saxon at the university. It was there he wrote The Hobbit, a novel that began as a bedtime story for his children, and followed it up with The Lord of the Rings.

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English bookshops reopen, hoping for Christmas trade rescue after lockdown

After calls to allow them to remain open during the second lockdown failed, the next three weeks will be vital for the sector

At The Bookshop in Liskeard, Cornwall, the first customer through the door on Wednesday snapped up The Sentinel by Lee and Andrew Child, while the second went for My Garden World by Monty Don. At Waterstones Piccadilly, after a Christmas elf cut a ceremonial ribbon to reopen the shop, the first reader went straight for the Booker prize winner, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. Bookshops across England were opening their doors on Wednesday for the first time in almost a month, in an attempt to land some of the vital Christmas trade that will, they hope, keep them in business.

“We have had a fantastic morning. Of course we have to socially distance and limit the number of customers in the shop but have been very busy since opening at nine,” said Bob Skillicorn, who owns the Liskeard shop with his wife Jackie. “We were ready and very happy to reopen. December is a critical month for us. Had we remained closed that would have had a serious impact on the ongoing viability of our bookshop.”

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A third of UK children do not see themselves reflected in books, finds survey

Responses from 60,000 young readers show 33% feel unrepresented, with an even worse picture among poorer and minority ethnic readers

A third of children in the UK do not see themselves in the books they read, according to a survey of almost 60,000 children and young people by the National Literacy Trust.

The responses from 58,346 children and young people aged nine to 18 were gathered between January and mid-March, in what the NLT is calling the first large-scale exploration of diversity in children’s books that focuses on children’s own experiences.

Related: Children's books eight times as likely to feature animal main characters as BAME people

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Maggie O'Farrell's 'wonderful' Hamnet declared Waterstones book of the year

Historical novel depicting the death of Shakespeare’s son from plague has already won this year’s Women’s prize for fiction

Maggie O’Farrell’s story about the short life of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, has been named Waterstones book of the year, with the chain’s booksellers saying its message of “hope through the darkest of times” was “especially prescient for this turbulent year”.

Related: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell review – immersive Shakespearean drama

Related: Maggie O’Farrell: ‘Having to bury a child must be unlike anything else’

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Mary Trump to release new book on ‘America’s national trauma’

• Book by president’s niece will be published in July 2021
• The Reckoning follows tell-all of her dysfunctional family

Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump will follow her bestselling exposé of her dysfunctional family life with a new book on “America’s national trauma”, her publisher has announced.

Related: Too Much and Never Enough review: Mary Trump thumps Donald

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