Avid reader Oscar’s Zoom bedtime stories give families a welcome escape

Cheltenham teenager read aloud to neighbours’ children in first lockdown and is now branching out

Every evening, just before 7pm, Oscar Mallett’s alarm goes off. The 14-year-old stops whatever he’s doing and grabs a book.

He opens his laptop, logs into Zoom, and soon the eager faces of children from across the country pop up, waiting for their bedtime story. In the background their parents can be seen heaving a sigh of relief, knowing that for the next half an hour at least, there will be some respite.

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London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers steps down after 30 years

Influential editor and co-founder of the literary magazine to be succeeded by senior staff

Mary-Kay Wilmers is stepping down from her role as editor of the London Review of Books, a position she has held for almost 30 years.

Wilmers was one of the founders of the literary magazine in 1979, along with Karl Miller and Susannah Clapp, became co-editor in 1988, and has been its sole editor since 1992. In 2019, when the LRB celebrated its 40th anniversary, she was dubbed “Britain’s most influential editor” by the New York Times.

Related: Mary-Kay Wilmers: 'At Faber, TS Eliot was referred to as the GLP – Greatest Living Poet'

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'Price gouging from Covid': student ebooks costing up to 500% more than in print

Call for inquiry into academic publishers as locked-down students unable to access study material online

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Librarians at UK universities say students’ reading lists for this term are being torn up because of publishers’ “eye-watering” increases to ebook prices, and some students are now reading what is available or affordable, rather than what their tutors think is best for their course.

With thousands of students studying in their bedrooms at home because of the pandemic, providing access to textbooks and research books online has become crucial. However, librarians say academic publishers are failing to offer electronic versions of many books, seen as critical to degree courses during the pandemic. And, they say, universities frequently cannot afford to buy the ebooks available, for which they can be charged more than five times as much as the printed version, often running into hundreds of pounds a copy, sometimes for one user at a time.

Related: 'Your coursemates are just computer icons': universities call for mental health cash

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Michael Lewis reveals next book, The Premonition, will be about coronavirus

After bestselling accounts of financial scandals, author now promises to tell story of misfits who anticipated the pandemic and went on to make sense of it

Michael Lewis, author of bestsellers including The Big Short and Liar’s Poker, is taking on a topic perhaps even more corrosive than Wall Street: coronavirus.

The author is currently researching and writing his next book, The Premonition, which will be rushed out by Allen Lane in the UK and Norton in the US in May. Subtitled A Pandemic Story, the book will open in January 2020, as people started dying from a new virus in Wuhan, when the magnitude of what lay ahead remained unclear to most people.

Related: Following the science: the writers who have made sense of Covid

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Fiction prize renamed in honour of Margaret Atwood and late partner Graeme Gibson

The Writers’ Trust of Canada has relaunched its annual fiction award as the Atwood Gibson prize, which Atwood says would have left him ‘very tickled’

Margaret Atwood has said that her late partner, the writer Graeme Gibson, would have been “very tickled” that a Canadian literary prize is being renamed after the couple, to honour their “unwavering commitment to supporting Canadian culture”.

Gibson, who died in 2019, and Atwood were two of the five co-founders of the Writers’ Trust of Canada in 1976. On Wednesday, the organisation said that because of their “tireless efforts to build structural supports for the then-nascent Canadian literary community”, it is now renaming its fiction award, won in the past by authors including Alice Munro, as the Atwood Gibson prize.

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Nora Roberts speaks out after attacks on casting of Alyssa Milano in adaptation

The bestselling novelist says she is ‘sincerely appalled’ by some readers’ anger at news that the #MeToo activist will star in a Netflix adaptation of Brazen Virtue

Bestselling novelist Nora Roberts has said she is “simply and sincerely appalled” after hundreds of her fans posted threats and abuse online in response to the casting of actor Alyssa Milano in an adaptation of one of her novels.

Milano is to play mystery writer Grace in a forthcoming Netflix adaptation of Brazen Virtue, the 1988 thriller by Roberts, who has written more than 200 books that have sold more than 500m copies around the world.

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Edinburgh book festival to quit New Town for art school

Festival cites Covid and costs of staging event heavily dependent on live audiences as reason for move

For nearly 40 years, the Edinburgh book festival has been held in a small tented city in Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town, its audiences sweltering in the summer sun or drenched by sudden downpours.

But in yet another casualty of the coronavirus crisis, the festival has quit Charlotte Square’s garden, citing the significant costs and long-term uncertainties of staging an event heavily dependent on live audiences.

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'Utterly original' Monique Roffey wins Costa book of the year

The Mermaid of Black Conch takes £30,000 award for 2020’s most enjoyable book, acclaimed by judges as a classic in the making

Monique Roffey has won the £30,000 Costa book of the year award for her sixth novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch, which opens as a fisherman on a Caribbean island sees a “barnacled, seaweed-clotted” mermaid raise her head from the sea.

Suzannah Lipscomb, the historian and broadcaster who chaired the judges, said the novel was “utterly original – unlike anything we’ve ever read – and feels like a classic in the making from a writer at the height of her powers”. Based on a legend from the Taino, an indigenous people of the Caribbean, the novel is a dark love story about fisherman David and Aycayia, a beautiful woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, who has swum the Caribbean for centuries.

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Bookshops defy pandemic to record highest sales for eight years

Despite shops being closed for much of 2020, figures show Britons bought books in volume – although many authors continued to struggle

More than 200m print books were sold in the UK last year, the first time since 2012 that number has been exceeded, according to an estimate from official book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic causing a series of lockdowns around the country – bookshops in England were closed from 23 March until 15 June, and then again from 5 November until 2 December, with differing lockdowns in place around the rest of the UK – Nielsen has estimated that the volume of print books sold grew by 5.2% compared with 2019. This equates to 202m books being sold in the UK last year and was worth £1.76bn, up 5.5% on 2019, said Nielsen.

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Bhanu Kapil wins TS Eliot poetry prize for 'radical' How to Wash a Heart

Judges praise the British-Indian poet’s ‘formidable’ collection, exploring the dynamic between an immigrant and her white, middle-class host

Bhanu Kapil has won the most valuable award in British poetry, the TS Eliot prize, for her “radical and arresting” collection How to Wash a Heart, in which she depicts the uncomfortable dynamics between an immigrant and her white, middle-class host.

In the collection, Kapil’s immigrant guest addresses her liberal host, exploring how “it’s exhausting to be a guest / In somebody else’s house / Forever”. It beat works by poets including JO Morgan and Natalie Diaz to the £25,000 prize, which counts among its former winners Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy and Seamus Heaney.

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Burns Night goes virtual: 'It might be even bigger this year'

Thousands join events in Scotland and far afield, and post-a-haggis service is in high demand

It’s the night when Scots emerge from mid-winter hibernation, says the Burns scholar Pauline Mackay. On the poet’s birthday, 25 January, or thereabouts, thousands of societies, clubs and groups of friends across Scotland and around the world gather to celebrate the life and work of the national bard Robert Burns.

The ritual elements of a Burns supper – addressing those gathered with his poem To a Haggis, completing several rounds of toasts and reading from the funny, sexy, radical diversity of his work – have remained constant since the first event was held by nine friends in 1801, five years after his death.

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Fabled ark could be among ancient treasures in danger in Ethiopia’s deadly war

Tigray’s rich heritage is ‘highly endangered’, experts warn, as the conflict escalates near key cultural sites

It has been hidden from view for thousands of years, and its whereabouts never proved. But if the Ark of the Covenant indeed rests in a chapel in northern Ethiopia, this extraordinary religious treasure could be at grave risk from fighting in the area.

The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, which reputedly houses the ark – a casket of gilded wood containing stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, according to the Bible – was the scene of a recent massacre of 750 people, reports filtering out of the country say.

Related: Ethiopia’s leader must answer for the high cost of hidden war in Tigray

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Sworn enemies: the real story of Old Bailey clash that ruined Oscar Wilde

Playwright’s grandson reveals letter that tells of deep loathing felt for Wilde by lawyer in libel trial

He was the brilliant lawyer whose brutal 1895 cross-examination of Oscar Wilde in one of the most famous trials in British history led to the Irish dramatist’s imprisonment for homosexuality, and to his ultimate ruin. Now a previously unpublished letter reveals that Sir Edward Carson’s attack on Wilde in the Old Bailey was partly personal – a loathing that went beyond his job in defending the Marquess of Queensberry in the ill-fated libel case.

Long after Carson’s death in 1935, the son of one of his friends confided in a 1950 letter: “I was never able to get Carson to admit that Wilde possessed any ability at all. ‘Ah,’ he used to say angrily, ‘he was a charlatan.’”

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Broom to Zoom: Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler launch new Covid tales

The author and illustrator of Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo have released more images showing their classic characters contending with the pandemic

“Iggety, ziggety, zaggety, ZOOM,” says the witch in Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Room on the Broom. But rather than shooting off on her broomstick as she does in the picture book, Donaldson and Scheffler have reimagined her stuck at home on Zoom, pleading for “somebody real in my room”.

In their second reimagining of some of their most famous characters for the Covid-19 era, author Donaldson and illustrator Scheffler show everyone from Room on the Broom’s witch to the mouse from The Gruffalo struggling with the trials and tribulations of the pandemic.

Related: Stay in your cave: the Gruffalo lends a claw to the coronavirus effort

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Amanda Gorman books top bestselling lists after soul-stirring inaugural poem

Two upcoming books on Amazon’s bestseller list within hours after the resounding delivery of her poem at the swearing-in

Amanda Gorman’s star continued its remarkable climb Thursday following the presidential laureate’s resounding delivery of her poem during the US presidential inauguration.

Within hours of Wednesday’s delivery, her soul-stirring reading of The Hill We Climb, at the swearing-in of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had landed the 22-year-old’s two upcoming books at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.

On a day for the history books, @TheAmandaGorman delivered a poem that more than met the moment. Young people like her are proof that "there is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it; if only we're brave enough to be it." pic.twitter.com/mbywtvjtEH

I can’t help but think that Maya Angelou is looking down from Heaven proud at the #BlackGirlMagic that is Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman.

Amanda’s #InaugurationDay poem “The Hill We Climb” was beautiful and wonderfully delivered.#AmandaGorman #Inauguration2021

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Amanda Gorman's inauguration poem launches author to top of book charts

The Hill We Climb will be published as a single book after barnstorming appearance at Joe Biden ceremony

Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who stole the show with her poem The Hill We Climb at the presidential inauguration on Wednesday, has landed yet another book deal, with her forthcoming debuts shooting straight to the top of the charts.

Hours after she stepped off the dais, publisher Penguin Children’s announced that it would be releasing Gorman’s poem as a hardcover book in spring, with plans to print 150,000 copies in the first run, unprecedented even for a whole poetry collection, “due to overwhelming demand”.

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The Hill We Climb: the Amanda Gorman poem that stole the inauguration show

The 22-year-old poet wowed the crowd with her reading during Joe Biden’s swearing-in. Here’s the transcript of her text

Mr President, Dr Biden, Madam Vice-President, Mr Emhoff,

Americans and the world,

Related: 'This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge': Joe Biden calls for unity in first speech as president – live

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Hungary orders LGBT publisher to print disclaimers on children's book

Fairytale anthology Wonderland Is for Everyone must now carry warning that its stories contain ‘behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles’

Hungary’s government, which has made hostility to LGBT people a central part of its rightwing agenda, on Tuesday ordered a publisher to print disclaimers identifying books containing “behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles”.

The government said the action was needed to protect consumers, after Labrisz, an association for lesbian, bisexual and trans women, published a fairytale anthology titled Wonderland Is for Everyone, which included some stories with LGBT themes.

Related: Hungarian government mounts new assault on LGBT rights

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Maya Angelou Barbie doll launched in US

Mattel adds figure of revered writer to its ‘Inspiring Women’ series alongside Rosa Parks and Florence Nightingale

During her lifetime, Maya Angelou was honoured with the US’s highest civilian honour, receiving the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama, as well as the national medal of arts from Bill Clinton. Now tribute is being paid to the late poet and civil rights activist from a less presidential sphere: toy manufacturer Mattel has announced that Angelou is to become a Barbie doll.

The new Barbie, whose face is “sculpted to Dr Angelou’s likeness” and who is wearing a head-wrap, jewellery and floral print dress on its “curvy body”, joins Rosa Parks and Florence Nightingale in the “Inspiring Women” series of Barbie dolls.

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Open letter calls for publishing boycott of Trump administration memoirs

More than 500 book industry professionals have added their names to a call for publishers not to sign up veterans of the departing president’s government

Five-hundred American authors and literary professionals have signed a letter calling on US publishers not to sign book deals with members of the Trump administration, saying “those who enabled, promulgated, and covered up crimes against the American people should not be enriched through the coffers of publishing”.

Put together by the author Barry Lyga, the letter, which is continuing to add names, has been signed by bestselling writers including Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere, Holly Black and Star Wars author Chuck Wendig. Titled “no book deals for traitors”, it opens by stating that the US “is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the imprimatur of respectability and a lot of money through sweetheart book deals”.

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‘A force to be reckoned with’– fantasy world pays tribute to Storm Constantine

A pioneering novelist, she was also a passionate publisher, highlighting voices neglected by the mainstream. My life was one of many changed by her enthusiasm

Storm Constantine, the fantasy author and book publisher who has died at the age of 64, was a prolific novelist and short-story writer. Her work, dealing deeply with gender and sexual politics, was far ahead of its time.

Constantine came to prominence with her 1987 novel The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, which introduced her androgynous Wraeththu race and spawned two sequels, The Bewitchments of Love and Hate, and The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire. In a 2016 interview with the writer and editor Nerine Dorman, Constantine said of her bestselling series: “Wraeththu are simply how the human race would be if I could design it myself; androgynous, beautiful (mostly), magical and housed in a more efficient vehicle of flesh and blood.”

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Amanda Gorman will be youngest poet to recite at a presidential inauguration

The 22-year-old will recite The Hill We Climb at Joe Biden’s swearing-in on Wednesday, following in the footsteps of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou

Amanda Gorman is set to become the sixth poet to perform at a presidential inauguration. At just 22, following in the footsteps of names including Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, she will also be the youngest.

Gorman, who was born and raised in Los Angeles and studied sociology at Harvard, became America’s first-ever national youth poet laureate in 2017. According to US reports, it was president-elect Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, who recommended her as his inaugural poet. Gorman will be performing on Wednesday alongside Lady Gaga, who will be singing the American national anthem, and Jennifer Lopez.

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Closure of an iconic Paris bookshop alarms French bibliophiles

Hit hard by the pandemic, the flagship Gibert Jeune store is closing its doors – one of many booksellers in the city feeling the strain of Covid-19

Paris, a great literary city, is losing one of its most celebrated bookshops. Gibert Jeune, a popular chain, has announced it will be closing its flagship shop in the Latin Quarter in March – the latest in a series of closures and appeals for help that threaten the future of the city’s booksellers.

Gibert Jeune once attracted long queues of students in search of cheap secondhand books before the start of each academic year; most students who have studied in Paris will have paid a visit to the six-floor shop at some point to find a book for their course. The family-owned company was founded in 1886 and started out as a bookstall on the banks of the Seine, quickly expanding into several shops in the fifth arrondissement, selling a mixture of new and secondhand books. Its bright yellow awnings along the Boulevard St Michel became a familiar landmark of the Latin Quarter, historically Paris’s literary and intellectual neighbourhood, and home to the Sorbonne.

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

Related: Shelf mythology: 100 years of Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company

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Josh Hawley finds new publisher after Simon & Schuster cancels book

• Simon & Schuster severed ties with senator after Capitol attack
• Publisher distributes titles by conservative imprint Regnery
• Kamala Harris: how will the next vice-president wield her power? Join the Guardian for a live conversation at 4pm ET

Rightwing Missouri senator Josh Hawley has found a publisher for a book dropped by Simon & Schuster over his role in attempting to overturn the US election on the day of the Capitol riot – and Simon & Schuster will distribute it.

Related: Billionaire backer feels 'deceived' by Josh Hawley over election objections

Maybe it was because you were cheering on violent insurgents pic.twitter.com/oH1XsuzSGU

Related: 'I’m facing a prison sentence': US Capitol rioters plead with Trump for pardons

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Patricia Highsmith: the ‘Jew-hater’ who took Jewish women as lovers

A biography of the author by Richard Bradford explores the paradox at the heart of her life

She espoused vile antisemitic views, telling people she was a “Jew hater” and calling the deaths of six million Jews “the semicaust” because she was disappointed more had not been murdered in the camps.

Yet Patricia Highsmith, born 100 years ago on 19 January, conducted three of her most significant affairs with Jewish women. Two, the American Ellen Blumenthal Hill and French-born Marion Aboudaram, were the most passionate and loving of the novelist’s life.

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Welcome to nature 2.0 for a new generation of Ladybird readers

Influential four seasons books are revamped to reflect changes in British wildlife

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, four slim volumes about the natural world, aimed at children, hit the bookshops. They bore the title What to Look for in… followed by each of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. The books were an instant success and inspired a whole generation of naturalists.

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How Stephen King’s gun essay found new life in ‘Gomorrah’

The horror writer agrees to let an editor whose cousin was shot and killed by Camorra gangs print his work on gun violence

A non-fiction essay about gun violence by the American horror writer Stephen King will be produced by a tiny publishing house in Scampia, on the outskirts of Naples, known as one of the biggest drug-dealing and arms hotspots in Europe and the setting for the Italian TV drama Gomorrah.

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What's to mock? Mills & Boon sells a romance every 10 seconds in UK

As Sarah Ferguson joins roster of authors, Mills & Boon and Bridgerton success shows there’s money in romance

It is easy to mock a fantasy world of personal assistants taming playboy princes, nurses unlocking the passions of surly surgeons, or chambermaids bedding brooding billionaires. Less easy to mock is the wild and continuing popularity of Mills & Boon when one of its romances is sold every 10 seconds in the UK.

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was this week revealed as the latest recruit to the publishers’ roster of authors, with a novel loosely based on the passions of her great-great-aunt, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott.

Related: Duchess of York’s first novel to be published by Mills & Boon

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Amazon.com and 'Big Five' publishers accused of ebook price-fixing

Class action lawsuit filed in US claims the houses have colluded with the online giant to keep prices artificially high

Amazon.com and the “Big Five” publishers – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago.

The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York on Thursday by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers “co-conspirators”. It alleges Amazon and the publishers use a clause known as “Most Favored Nations” (MFN) to keep ebook prices artificially high, by agreeing to price restraints that force consumers to pay more for ebooks purchased on retail platforms that are not Amazon.com.

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Rimbaud's remains will not be moved to Panthéon, rules Macron

President decides against relocating remains of French poet to Parisian memorial

The remains of the famed French poet Arthur Rimbaud will not be moved to the Panthéon mausoleum despite a campaign to honour him as an artist and symbol of gay rights, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has decided.

A petition last year backed by a number of celebrities as well as the culture minister, Roselyne Bachelot, called for Rimbaud to be reinterred alongside his lover and fellow poet Paul Verlaine at the monument in central Paris.

Related: France divided over calls for Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine to be reburied in Panthéon

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Tintin cover art sells for €2.6m, just missing record for comic-book sale

Hergé’s original artwork for Le Lotus Bleu was rejected as too expensive to reproduce in 1936 and given to editor’s son, who kept it in a drawer for decades

A rejected Tintin cover illustrated by Hergé that was gifted to a child and kept in a drawer for decades has just missed setting a new world record as the most expensive comic book artwork, selling at auction for €2.6m (£2.3m) on Thursday.

Le Lotus Bleu was created in 1936 by the Belgian artist, born Georges Remi, using Indian ink, gouache and watercolour. It had been intended for the eponymous cover of his fifth Tintin title, which sees the boy reporter head to China in order to dismantle an opium trafficking ring.

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Agatha Christie cinema in Devon to be restored to former glory

Paignton Picture House on the English Riviera awarded £200k grant from Historic England

A lovely old cinema in Devon that once reserved a balcony for the crime writer Agatha Christie – and a second one for her butler – is to be restored to its former glory.

The Paignton Picture House on the English Riviera has been awarded a £200,000 grant from Historic England to refurbish intricate stonework and stained glass windows.

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Captain America creator’s son hits out at Capitol mob's use of superhero imagery

Neal Kirby says he was appalled the see symbols of the patriotic action man among the crowds as ‘Captain America is the antithesis of Donald Trump’

The son of Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby has strongly condemned insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol last week wearing or brandishing symbols of the Marvel superhero, saying his father would have been “absolutely sickened” by the sight.

In a statement issued to CNN reporter Jake Tapper, Neal Kirby, 72, said he was “appalled and mortified” to see Trump supporters dressed in Captain America costumes or displaying his iconic star shield on 6 January. His father Jack, along with Joe Simon, created Captain America in 1941, with the comic’s first issue famously showing the superhero punching Adolf Hitler in the face.

Related: Art Spiegelman: golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism

Related: How do you stop the far-right using the Punisher skull? Make it a Black Lives Matter symbol

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Duchess of York’s first novel to be published by Mills & Boon

Sarah Ferguson says historical tale Her Heart for a Compass is inspired by experiences in her own life

The Duchess of York has landed a book deal with romantic fiction publisher Mills & Boon, revealing that she “drew on many parallels from my life” for the historical tale.

Sarah Ferguson’s debut novel, Her Heart for a Compass, will be released in August and tells a fictional account of the life and love story of her great-great-aunt Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott.

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New Sally Rooney novel to be published in September

Beautiful World, Where Are You, set to be released on 7 September, follows four young people as they navigate love, friendship and sex

Sally Rooney’s third novel, and her first since the widely acclaimed Normal People, will be published on 7 September.

Beautiful World, Where Are You, announced by Rooney’s UK publisher Faber on Tuesday, follows Alice and Eileen, two friends in their twenties who find themselves on very different trajectories. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse and asks him to go to Rome with her; Eileen, recovering from a break-up in Dublin, begins to flirt with Simon, a childhood friend.

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Pioneering Observer columnist Katharine Whitehorn dies aged 92

The first woman to have her own column in the Observer, Whitehorn was a celebrated writer and author

Katharine Whitehorn, the pioneering newspaper columnist and author, has died aged 92.

The Cambridge graduate worked briefly as a model before embarking on a celebrated writing career, working for publications including the Observer, Picture Post and Saga magazine, where she was agony aunt for 19 years.

Related: Sisters under the coat: Katharine Whitehorn's landmark 'slut' column

Related: Katharine Whitehorn, the author of Cooking in a Bedsitter, talks to Rachel Cooke

Related: Katharine Whitehorn on her classic bedsit cookbook

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Danny Boyle to direct Sex Pistols TV drama based on Steve Jones' memoir

Co-written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, six-part series Pistol to star Maisie Williams as punk icon Jordan and Babyteeth’s Toby Wallace as Jones

Danny Boyle is to direct a six-part television drama about the Sex Pistols – to be titled Pistol – based on guitarist Steve Jones’s 2018 memoir, Lonely Boy. In a statement, Boyle described the Sex Pistols’ emergence in the mid-70s as the moment that British society and culture changed for ever.

“Imagine breaking into the world of The Crown and Downton Abbey with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent,” said Boyle. “It is the detonation point for British street culture where ordinary young people had the stage and vented their fury and their fashion, and everyone had to watch and listen and everyone feared them or followed them.”

Related: John Lydon: 'Don't become entrenched in one opinion and get stuck there for ever'

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Booker winner’s mission to put UK's forgotten black writers back in print

The Black Britain, Writing Back series curated by Bernardine Evaristo aims to correct ‘historical bias in publishing’

Bernardine Evaristo, the Booker prize-winning novelist, is heading a major project to republish books by black British writers that generally disappeared without trace before they could receive the recognition they deserved.

The author of Girl, Woman, Other has curated “Black Britain, Writing Back”, a series that launches in February, with six initial titles ranging from literary thrillers to historical fiction. Evaristo said she is seeking “to correct historic bias in British publishing and bring a wealth of lost writing back into circulation”.

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Pioneering Observer columnist Katharine Whitehorn dies aged 93

The first woman to have her own column in the Observer, Whitehorn was a celebrated writer and author

Katharine Whitehorn, the pioneering newspaper columnist and author, has died aged 93.

The Cambridge graduate worked briefly as a model before embarking on a celebrated writing career, working for publications including the Observer, Picture Post and Saga magazine, where she was agony aunt for 19 years.

Related: Sisters under the coat: Katharine Whitehorn's landmark 'slut' column

Related: Katharine Whitehorn, the author of Cooking in a Bedsitter, talks to Rachel Cooke

Related: Katharine Whitehorn on her classic bedsit cookbook

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Harry Potter and Michael Bublé fuel UK online reselling boom

Sales at MusicMagpie jumped more than 22% last year as secondhand books and CD sales soared

Harry Potter, Michael Bublé and PlayStation 4 have helped fuel a boom in online sales of secondhand books, CDs and consumer technology during the pandemic.

Sales at MusicMagpie, an online “reseller”, jumped more than 22% to nearly £120min the UK last year as sales of secondhand books soared by 75% and consumer technology – including previously used smartphones and games consoles – rose by a fifth.

Adele – 21

ABBA – ABBA Gold

Guns N’ Roses – Greatest Hits

Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Adele – 25

This is Going to Hurt – by Adam Kay

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – by JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – by JK Rowling (Hardback)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – by JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – by JK Rowling

Michael Bublé – Christmas

ABBA – ABBA Gold

Nirvana – Nevermind

Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms

Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

PS4

Xbox One

PS4 Pro

Xbox One S

PS4 Slim

FIFA 19 (PS4)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Xbox 360)

Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360)

Call of Duty: Black Ops (PS3)

Fallout 4 (PS4)

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War of the words: HG Wells coin also features false quote

The new coin is inscribed: ‘Good books are warehouses of ideas’ – but digging reveals the quote to be both wrong and expressing a different sentiment

It is a mystery that HG Wells’s characters would have been quick to leap on, but one that would doubtless have enraged the fastidious Wells himself: what is the origin of the quote chosen by the Royal Mint and attributed to him on the new Wells £2 coin?

Intended to mark 75 years since the death of the author, the coin has already been criticised for depicting the “monstrous tripod” featured in The War of the Worlds with a fourth leg, and for giving his Invisible Man a top hat, which the character never wore. Then the Wells expert Prof Simon James spotted the quote chosen for the edge of the coin: “Good books are warehouses of ideas.” James and his fellow academic Adam Roberts, a vice-president of the Wells Society, could source no such quote in Wells’s writing – although it is credited to him on various inspirational quote websites.

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Indie bookshops defy Covid to record highest numbers for seven years

There were 967 independents in the UK and Ireland at the end of last year, the most since 2013 - but the figure masks around 100 closures

Jane James was a freelance bookkeeper until the pandemic hit and most of her business disappeared. Rather than waiting for it to trickle back, she decided to embark on a dream she’d held for more than a decade and open her own independent bookshop in Thetford, Norfolk.

She’s not the only one. Last year might have seemed like a strange time to launch a new business, but according to figures from the Booksellers Association, more than 50 new bookshops were opened in 2020, taking the body’s independent bookshop membership to 967 shops in the UK and Ireland. This is up from 890 shops in 2019, 883 in 2018 and 868 in 2017. The latter figure marked the end of a decline that started in 1995, when 1,894 indie bookshops were recorded.

Related: 'We're here for the long haul': are independent bookshops finally back on the rise?

Related: Delivery by skateboard? Coronavirus sees indie booksellers get inventive

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'They adored each other': book casts new light on Francis Bacon's lover

Exclusive: Peter Lacy was not the sadistic fighter pilot and drunk he has been described as, authors say

He has been portrayed as a heroic fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, with a sadistic streak that bordered on the psychopathic, beating his lover Francis Bacon and once hurling him through a glass window. But new research paints another picture of Peter Lacy, revealing that he was never a fighter pilot and that, beyond the sexual violence, the relationship with Bacon was real love for both men.

The Pulitzer prize-winning authors Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan are publishing a major biography about one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. With the full cooperation of Bacon’s estate, they received access to archives and interviewed family and friends of the artist and his lovers, among others.

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Josh Hawley: publisher cancels book in wake of Capitol attack

Simon & Schuster says it ‘cannot support senator after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom’

Publishers have cancelled a planned book by Senator Josh Hawley, who objected to Joe Biden’s presidential election win and backed baseless claims that the vote was stolen.

Thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Wednesday and many ended up storming into the Capitol building and occupying it for hours, resulting in four deaths and delaying the certification of Biden’s win. A widely seen photo, taken before the occupation, shows Hawley raising a fist in solidarity to the crowd.

Related: Democratic leaders call for Trump's removal from office

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James Comey: Donald Trump should not be prosecuted after leaving office

• Fired FBI director: next attorney general must ‘foster trust’
• President has insulted Comey and threatened him with jail

Donald Trump should not be prosecuted once he leaves the White House no matter how much evidence has been amassed against him, the former FBI director James Comey writes in a new book.

Related: Trump call to Georgia secretary of state electrifies voters in Senate runoffs

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HG Wells fans spot numerous errors on Royal Mint's new £2 coin

Readers say coin commemorating the author of The War of the Worlds gives his alien tripod a fourth leg and The Invisible Man the wrong kind of hat

Observant fans of HG Wells have questioned how a new coin from the Royal Mint commemorating The War of the Worlds author could be released with multiple errors, including giving his “monstrous tripod” four legs.

The £2 coin is intended to mark 75 years since the death of Wells, and includes imagery inspired by The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man.

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Lee Lawrence’s memoir of his mother’s shooting by police wins Costa award

The Louder I Will Sing wins best biography, with other prizes including best novel for Monique Roffey and posthumous poetry honour for Eavan Boland

• ‘My mum was more than the woman shot by police’: read an extract from The Louder I Will Sing

Debut author Lee Lawrence has won the Costa biography award for a memoir about his lengthy quest to find justice for his mother, who was left paralysed after being shot by London police in 1985.

Related: ‘The man who shot my mum is still living his life’: Cherry Groce's son on life after police brutality

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Michael Morpurgo denies 'censoring' Merchant of Venice in children's book

War Horse author says his Tales from Shakespeare was only ever going to include 10 plays, and he has chosen the ones most likely to appeal to young readers

Michael Morpurgo has denied a Sunday Times report that he “refused” to include The Merchant of Venice in a forthcoming Shakespeare anthology for children due to antisemitism.

The newspaper described the former children’s laureate’s “21st-century sensibilities” as having prevented the inclusion of the play in Tales from Shakespeare, his retelling of 10 Shakespeare plays for children aged six and older. The Merchant of Venice famously features the Jewish moneylender Shylock, who demands a pound of flesh from the merchant Antonio if a loan is not repaid by his deadline.

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Italy begins year of Dante anniversary events with virtual Uffizi exhibition

Gallery puts seldom-seen Divine Comedy sketches on display online to mark 700 years since poet’s death

Eighty-eight rarely seen drawings of Dante’s The Divine Comedy have been put on virtual display as Italy begins a year-long calendar of events to mark the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death.

The drawings, by the 16th-century Renaissance artist Federico Zuccari, are being exhibited online, for free, by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

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