Authors to earn royalties on secondhand books for first time

AuthorSHARE, a royalty fund set up by two used booksellers with support from industry bodies, is calling for more retailers to participate

Unlike regular book sales or library borrowing, authors do not receive a penny from the sale of secondhand editions of their works – but a new scheme dreamed up by used booksellers is set to change this for the first time.

William Pryor, founder of Somerset-based used bookseller Bookbarn International, came up with the idea to pay authors royalties on used book sales in 2015, but needed a wider partnership to make it work. World of Books Group, which describes itself as the UK’s largest retailer of used books, then got involved to help Pryor create AuthorSHARE, a royalty fund worth £200,000 for the scheme’s first year.

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Daughter of writer Michael Lewis and Tabitha Soren killed in car crash

Dixie Lewis, 19, was in a car that was travelling on State Route 89 in California when it crossed into the path of an oncoming truck

Dixie Lewis, the 19-year-old daughter of the writer Michael Lewis and former MTV correspondent Tabitha Soren, has been killed in a highway crash in northern California.

Lewis was a passenger in a car driven by her friend and former Berkeley High School classmate, Ross Schultz, 20, who also died in accident on Tuesday afternoon, according to her family and authorities.

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His fair lady: how George Bernard Shaw’s wife played a vital role in his masterworks

Charlotte’s influence has been downplayed, says a new book on how women are written out of history

In the climactic final scene of George Bernard Shaw’s masterpiece Pygmalion, Henry Higgins famously threatens to wring Eliza Doolittle’s neck. “Wring away!” she replies. “Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.”

Until now, Shaw’s play about the flower girl who is transformed into a duchess by a wealthy professor was thought to have little in common with the great playwright’s own life. But this summer, a new book will shine a spotlight on the important contributions that Shaw’s wife, Charlotte, an heiress and intellectual, made to his work – and reveal how her connections and influence utterly transformed Shaw’s life and career.

Related: How TV fell out of love with George Bernard Shaw

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‘I wanted young people to see my journey’: Obama to Rashford on Zoom

Former US president and England footballer discuss activism and inspiring others to create change

Barack Obama and Marcus Rashford have teamed up to encourage young people to shape their own destinies and the societies in which they live. The former US president and the Manchester United and England forward met in a Zoom meeting arranged by Penguin Books, and posted to YouTube on Friday, to discuss the motivations behind their own activism and their eagerness to inspire others to create change.

“The thing I want young people to see is that even in the highest reaches of power, where I’m sitting with world leaders and we’re trying to design a programme to deal with climate change or end a war or address a major world economic crisis, it’s still just humans,” said Obama. “It’s still just people. So often for many young people, particularly young people who are poor or don’t come from well-connected families or young people of colour or women or people of different sexual orientation, so often we feel like outsiders, not sure we belong at the table in making those decisions.

Related: Marcus Rashford and Barack Obama share ‘surreal’ Zoom conversation

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Children’s authors on Eric Carle: ‘He created readers as voracious as that caterpillar’

Authors from Julia Donaldson to Cressida Cowell pay tribute to the beloved author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, who has died aged 91

The late Eric Carle has been hailed by fellow children’s writers for creating generations of readers as voracious as his best-loved creation, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Carle, who died on Sunday at the age of 91, left behind titles including his worldwide bestselling board book – about a caterpillar who eats his way through a week’s worth of food before turning into a butterfly – as well as The Very Busy Spider, The Mixed-Up Chameleon and Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me.

Related: Eric Carle obituary

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First English dictionary of ancient Greek since Victorian era ‘spares no blushes’

Words the most recent Greek lexicon translated as ‘to wench’ or ‘do one’s need’ have been given much earthier new readings for modern students of classics

Victorian attempts to veil the meanings of crude ancient Greek words are set to be brushed away by a new dictionary 23 years in the making. It is the first to take a fresh look at the language in almost 200 years and promises to “spare no blushes” for today’s classics students.

The late scholar John Chadwick first came up with the idea to update HG Liddell and Robert Scott’s 1889 dictionary, the Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, in 1997. An abridged version of a lexicon published in 1843, the Liddell and Scott had never been revised, and is packed with antiquated terms and modestly Victorian translations of the more colourful ancient Greek words. Despite this, it remains the most commonly used reference work for students in English schools and universities.

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Eric Carle, author and illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, dies at 91

Beloved children’s author who inspired millions of children died at summer home in Massachusetts, say family

Eric Carle, the children’s author and illustrator whose classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other works gave millions of children some of their earliest literary memories, has died at age 91.

Carle’s family said he died on Sunday at his summer studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, with family members at his side.

Oh man, I love Eric Carle. Cannot count the times my children and I were cuddled up, completely enraptured in the glory of his books. He was a gift to humanity. Love forever, broken through to the other side, Eric Carle. https://t.co/5N2dhEvdWS

It is impossible to estimate the number very young lives in which his gentle, curious voice has made a difference. Wonder, delight, the comfort of a familiar voice. Thanks, Eric Carle, for unforgettable times with my sons when they were very small. https://t.co/DZH8sR6aCN

To have spent some time with Eric Carle was the closest thing one could get to hanging out with the actual Santa Claus. His books and his advocacy for the arts will continue to ripple through time. But we in the children’s book community will miss him terribly. pic.twitter.com/HnH8ggW2u7

This is the gift that Eric Carle gave me on the first day I visited his studio. Over the next 13 years he gave me such a greater gift: his friendship. A gentleman w/ a mischievous charm. RIP. pic.twitter.com/jyJdJfzqCN

Eric Carle has died- but he left us the unforgettable Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear- books i read to my children and now my grandchildren. Loving thoughts with his family and very much gratitude for Mr Carle.♥️ https://t.co/McNZ6IxROa

Caterpillar is a book of hope: you, too, can grow up and grow wings.

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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Patrice Lawrence win Jhalak prizes for writers of colour

Makumbi wins book of the year for her novel The First Woman, while Lawrence takes inaugural children’s books prize for Eight Pieces of Silva

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has won this year’s Jhalak prize for writers of colour with her novel The First Woman, with Patrice Lawrence winning the award’s inaugural children’s and young adult category for her “unapologetic celebration of teen culture”, Eight Pieces of Silva.

Related: The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi review – coming of age in Uganda

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Emily Brontë’s handwritten poems are highlight of ‘lost library’ auction

Collection of rare books and manuscripts first assembled by Charlotte Brontë’s widower has been out of public view for nearly a century

An “incredibly rare” handwritten manuscript of Emily Brontë’s poems, with pencil corrections by her sister Charlotte, is going up for auction as part of a “lost library” that has been out of public view for nearly a century.

The collection was put together by Arthur Bell Nicholls, the widower of Charlotte, who of the six Brontë children lived the longest, dying in 1855 at the age of 38. Nicholls sold the majority of the surviving Brontë manuscripts in 1895 to the notorious bibliophile and literary forger Thomas James Wise. The collectors and brothers Alfred and William Law, who grew up 20 miles from the Brontë family home in Haworth, then acquired some of the family’s heirlooms from Wise, including the manuscript of Emily’s poems, and the family’s much-annotated copy of A History of British Birds, a book immortalised in Jane Eyre.

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Timothée Chalamet to play Willy Wonka in origins movie

Oscar nominee will follow in the footsteps of Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp with role of the chocolate maker in Roald Dahl’s Wonka

Timothée Chalamet is set to take on the role of Willy Wonka in a new origins movie.

According to Deadline, the Oscar-nominated star of Call Me by Your Name will follow in the footsteps of Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp in an all-singing and all-dancing performance in a prequel inspired by Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Related: Baby Jaws? Scar Face the Lion? The origin stories we’d like to see

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John Steinbeck’s estate urged to let the world read his shunned werewolf novel

Rejected and hidden away since 1930, an early murder mystery by the Nobel-winning author is ‘an incredible find’

Years before becoming one of America’s most celebrated authors, John Steinbeck wrote at least three novels which were never published. Two of them were destroyed by the young writer as he struggled to make his name, but a third – a full-length mystery werewolf story entitled Murder at Full Moon – has survived unseen in an archive ever since being rejected for publication in 1930.

Now a British academic is calling for the Steinbeck estate to finally allow the publication of the work, written almost a decade before masterpieces such as The Grapes of Wrath, his epic about the Great Depression and the struggles of migrant farm workers.

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Ed Miliband: I was 50 when I finally mastered the art of riding a bike

Former Labour leader says he had been ‘very nervous’ before an electric bicycle made him a convert

Ed Miliband only mastered the art of riding a bicycle aged 50 – and was put off using an adult tricycle because he was worried about the paparazzi, he reveals in a new book serialised in the Guardian on Saturday.

Admitting he had always been a “very, very nervous [bicycle] rider” as a child, the now 51-year-old hired an electric bike while on holiday in France and “had an epiphany”. “This”, he said, “was the eureka moment”.

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Michael Rosen condemns ‘loathsome and antisemitic’ manipulated image

Northumbria University is investigating one of its staff for sharing a doctored image of Jeremy Corbyn reading an antisemitic text, placed over Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt

Northumbria University is urgently investigating one of its academics after a doctored image was shared from his Twitter account showing Jeremy Corbyn reading from the notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The title had been superimposed on the Michael Rosen book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which Corbyn was actually reading from, an act Rosen described as “loathsome and antisemitic”.

Rosen, the Jewish children’s author and academic, responded to a tweet sent from the account of Northumbria University English literature lecturer and author Dr Pete Newbon on Wednesday morning. The original image is of the former Labour leader reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to some children. The doctored image still features Corbyn, but replaces the page from the book with the cover of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and includes the caption: “A nasty, horrible Zionist! We can’t go over him, we can’t go under him, we’ll have to make an effigy”, drawing on Rosen’s book’s famously singsong text.

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Valeria Luiselli wins €100,000 Dublin literary award for Lost Children Archive

Novel, which weaves together the stories of Mexican migrants with those of a US family on a road trip south, was picked for the prize by a Barcelona library

Earlier this year, a library in Barcelona submitted a nomination for its favourite book of the year: Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. On Thursday, thanks to Biblioteca Vila De Gràcia, Luiselli was named winner of the world’s richest prize for a novel published in English, the €100,000 (£86,000) Dublin literary award.

“It’s a beautiful, relatively small library in Barcelona who nominated me,” said Luiselli. “I’m going to kiss its rocks one day, because I probably won’t be able to kiss its librarians because of Covid.”

Related: Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli review – border crossings

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Indian authors speak out over plan to reissue Narendra Modi exam book

Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy attack Penguin Random House India for putting out book by a prime minister they say has mishandled Covid and persecuted writers

Leading Indian authors Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy have spoken out against Penguin Random House India’s decision to publish and promote a book by Narendra Modi during the country’s coronavirus crisis, with Mishra accusing PRH India of “enlist[ing] in a flailing politician’s propaganda campaign”.

In a letter published in the London Review of Books blog, Mishra wrote to the chief executive of PRH India, Gaurav Shrinagesh, after the publisher announced it would be reissuing Modi’s book Exam Warriors while, in Mishra’s words, “smoke from mass funeral pyres rose across India”. India suffered a world record one-day death toll from Covid-19 on Wednesday – 4,529 – with the overall figure believed to be much higher than the official death toll of 283,248.

Related: Stench of death pervades rural India as Ganges swells with Covid victims

Related: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe: ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’

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Kentaro Miura, creator of bestselling manga Berserk, dies aged 54

Thousands of fans gather in online games to hold memorials for the artist and writer, who had been working on the series since 1989

Kentaro Miura, creator of the long-running dark fantasy manga Berserk – one of the bestselling manga series ever written – has died at the age of 54.

His US publisher Dark Horse Comics, describing Miura as a “master artist and storyteller”, said he had suffered acute aortic dissection and died on 6 May. “He will be greatly missed. Our condolences go out to his family and loved ones.”

Balmung's dark knight memorial to Berserk author Kentaro Miura. I love this community. pic.twitter.com/QYveSkQ9Go

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‘Madman … racist, sexist pig’: new book details Obama’s real thoughts on Trump

The Democratic ex-president was candid in remarks to donors and advisers, according to Battle for the Soul by Edward-Isaac Dovere

For much of Donald Trump’s presidency, Barack Obama largely abided by the convention that former presidents do not publicly criticize or attack their successors.

Related: Trump family members got ‘inappropriately close’ to Secret Service agents, book claims

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Final John le Carré novel, Silverview, to be published in October

Finished before his death in December, Le Carré gave his blessing to publish the novel, which follows a bookseller who becomes embroiled in a spy leak

Silverview, a final full-length novel by John le Carré, in which the late author delves into “the soul of the modern Secret Intelligence Service”, will be published this October.

Le Carré, the author of seminal thrillers including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, died in December aged 89. Born David Cornwell, he had been working on Silverview, his 26th novel, alongside A Legacy of Spies and Agent Running in the Field. He had completed the full-length manuscript of the book when he died.

Related: My father was famous as John le Carré. My mother was his crucial, covert collaborator

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Republic of Consciousness prize shares £20,000 pot between longlist

Shola von Reinhold wins the award for small publishing houses with their novel LOTE, but financial reward split between 10 publishers

The Scottish author Shola von Reinhold has won the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses for their “dazzling” queer debut novel LOTE. But the £20,000 prize money will not go to von Reinhold alone: instead, in a first, it is being split between the 10 publishers on the longlist.

LOTE follows Mathilda, a black woman who becomes fixated by a forgotten black Scottish modernist poet. Released by London independent press Jacaranda as part of founder Valerie Brandes’ initiative to publish 20 black British writers in 2020, it is, said prize judge John Mitchinson, a dazzling novel that makes the reader “stand back and gasp at the wit, beauty and mischief von Reinhold has brocaded into the story”.

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Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling add lots to auction for global vaccine rollout

Fundraiser running until 21 May also includes chances to consult with star agent Jonny Geller and have a character named after you in a Sarah Pinborough novel

A literary auction raising money to help vaccinate the world against coronavirus has made more than £23,000 so far, as book lovers bid to win signed novels by authors including Hilary Mantel, as well as mentoring sessions from star publishers and agents.

Bidding at Books for Vaccines for a personal consultation with literary agent Jonny Geller has reached £1,000, while a signed box set of the Wolf Hall trilogy, with handwritten first sentences from Mantel, has topped £600. The auction is running until 21 May, with other lots including the chance to have a character named after you in the next novel by Sarah Pinborough, author of the Netflix hit Behind Her Eyes, a signed copy of Marian Keyes’s novel Grown Ups, and the chance to write the dedication at the front of Jill Mansell’s new novel.

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Cancelled Philip Roth biography picked up by new publisher amid abuse allegations

Blake Bailey’s life of Roth to be republished by Skyhorse Publishing, home to Woody Allen and Roger Stone, next month

A biography of the late novelist Philip Roth that was dropped by its original publisher after sexual abuse claims against its author Blake Bailey has found a new home.

Originally released in April in the US by WW Norton, Bailey’s book had been much-heralded: he had been appointed to the role by Roth, having been the biographer of writers including John Cheever and Richard Yates. But that same month, multiple women came forward to allege that Bailey had sexually harassed and abused them when they were in their late teens and early 20s, and that he had spent years grooming them while he was their teacher at Lusher Middle School in New Orleans in the 1990s. A week later, WW Norton pulled the book and cut its ties with the author.

Related: Philip Roth and Blake Bailey were an all-too-perfect match | Francine Prose

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Want to try Jane Austen’s favourite cheese toastie? Now you can

The ‘household book’ of Martha Lloyd, who lived with the Austens, contains recipes giving an authentic flavour of the writer’s life

“Grate the Cheese & add to it one egg, & a teaspoonful of Mustard, & a little Butter,” advises Martha Lloyd, a close friend of Jane Austen, in her recipe for one of the author’s favourite meals, “Toasted Cheese”. “Send it up on a toast or in paper Trays.”

This recipe is part of the “household book” written between 1798 and 1830 by Lloyd, who lived with Austen, her sister Cassandra and their mother (also called Cassandra) for years. The four women lived together in a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane wrote, revised and had published all of her novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

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The secret of how Amundsen beat Scott in race to south pole? A diet of raw penguin

Starving and trapped by ice, the Norwegian’s crew had discovered how to beat scurvy on an earlier voyage. The benefits proved crucial

Thirteen years before he became the first person ever to reach the south pole in 1911, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen experienced his first merciless taste of winter in the Antarctic. Stuck onboard the Belgian expedition ship Belgica, which was grounded in pack ice, he and the rest of the crew contracted scurvy and faced certain death.

That is when, according to a new book published later this month, Amundsen started eating raw penguin meat – and discovered a secret that would later give him a huge advantage over Captain Robert Falcon Scott in the race to the south pole.

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Who’s missing? Top author stirs anger with ‘too white’ history

Richard Cohen’s new book, which has reportedly been dropped by his US publisher despite extensive additions, is still set for British release next month

It has taken nearly a decade to research and write, and runs to more than 750 pages. But The History Makers, described as “an epic exploration of those who write about the past”, has itself been rewritten after its author failed to take into account enough black historians, academics and writers.

Richard Cohen was told by his publisher to produce new chapters and expand others after failing to sufficiently acknowledge the roles of black people and African Americans.

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John Burningham’s final picture book is poignant tale of ‘difficult’ dog’s last trip

Air Miles has been illustrated by his wife Helen Oxenbury and finished by Bill Salaman, friend of the author who died in 2019

The final picture book from the late, much-loved children’s author John Burningham – in which “difficult dog” Miles goes on one final journey – has been completed by his friend Bill Salaman and illustrated by his wife, Helen Oxenbury.

Burningham, who died in 2019 at the age of 82, wrote and illustrated some of the 20th century’s most treasured picture books, from Mr Gumpy’s Outing to Granpa. He was married for more than 50 years to Oxenbury, whose illustrations adorn picture books including We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. Oxenbury said that when Burningham became ill, he asked her to finish the book he was working on, Air Miles, for him.

Related: John Burningham – a life in pictures

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Nobel archives reveal judges’ safety fears for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Swedish Academy documents reveal debate over naming the dissident writer the 1970 literature laureate, four years before his exile from the Soviet Union

Newly opened archives at the Swedish Academy have revealed the depth of concern among Nobel judges for the consequences awaiting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn if the dissident Soviet writer were awarded the prize for literature in 1970.

The author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, who revealed the horrors of Stalin’s gulags in his writings and was eventually exiled by the Soviet Union, was named the Nobel laureate that year, lauded by the committee for “the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”.

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Raven Leilani wins Dylan Thomas prize for ‘fearless’ novel Luster

US author wins £20,000 award for writers under 39 – the age Thomas died – for her debut about a black woman who starts dating an older white man in an open marriage

The American novelist Raven Leilani has won the £20,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize, with her “fearless” debut Luster, about a young black woman who begins dating a white man in an open marriage.

The award is given to a work by an author aged 39 or under, in honour of the Welsh poet Thomas, who died when he was 39. Leilani, 30, has won for her first novel, which follows Edie, who is working a depressing job in publishing when she begins seeing Eric, 23 years her senior. She is subsequently drawn into the lives of Rebecca, Eric’s wife, and their adopted black daughter Akila.

Related: Raven Leilani: 'I try to replicate a version of sex on the page where the reader feels like a voyeur'

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Tintin heirs lose legal battle over artist’s Edward Hopper mashups

French artist Xavier Marabout wins case and €10,000 in damages after Moulinsart contacted galleries displaying his art

The French artist who was sued by the Tintin creator Hergé’s heirs over his paintings that place the boy adventurer in romantic encounters has won his case after a court deemed them parodies.

Xavier Marabout’s dreamy artworks imagine Tintin into the landscapes of Edward Hopper, including a take on Queensborough Bridge, 1913, or talking with a less-clothed version of Hopper’s Chop Suey.

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Airini Beautrais wins New Zealand’s Ockham fiction prize for short story collection Bug Week

Author, who usually writes poetry, beat two previous winners to the prestigious NZ$57,000 book award

A collection of short stories has won the top prize at the Ockham New Zealand book awards – only the second time a collection has won the fiction prize in the awards’ history, and the first time in over a decade.

Airini Beautrais won the NZ$57,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction for her collection, Bug Week & Other Stories. Beautrais has published several books of poetry, but Bug Week is her first work of fiction. She was nominated alongside two previous winners of the award – Catherine Chidgey and Pip Adam – as well as a past nominee, Brannavan Gnanalingam.

Related: Like Christmas: New Zealand's post-Covid books boom

The Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand award for illustrated nonfiction: Hiakai: Modern Māori Cuisine, by Monique Fiso

Te Mūrau o te Tuhi, a Māori language award: to Mātāmua ko te Kupu!, by Tā Tīmoti Kāretu

The Hubert Church prize for a best first book of fiction: Victory Park by Rachel Kerr

The E H McCormick prize for a best first work of general nonfiction: Specimen: Personal Essays by Madison Hamill

The Jessie Mackay prize for a best first book of poetry: I Am a Human Being by Jackson Nieuwland

The Judith Binney prize for a best first work of illustrated nonfiction: Hiakai: Modern Māori Cuisine by Monique Fiso

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The Butchers: novel set in Irish BSE crisis wins Ondaatje prize

Ruth Gilligan’s thriller about eight men who cull cattle in rural Ireland wins £10,000 for books that ‘best evoke the spirit of a place’

Ruth Gilligan’s literary thriller The Butchers, set in the Irish borderlands during the BSE crisis, has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize for books that “best evoke the spirit of a place”.

Gilligan’s novel beat titles including James Rebanks’ memoir of his family farm, English Pastoral, and Nina Mingya Powles’ poetry collection Magnolia, 木蘭 to the £10,000 prize. The Butchers opens with an ancient curse that decrees that eight men must touch every cow in Ireland as it dies, and follows a group of eight men as they roam rural Ireland in the 1990s, slaughtering the cows of those who still believe in the old ways. The novel unpicks the mysterious death of one of the Butchers, whose corpse is found suspended from a meat hook.

Related: The Butchers by Ruth Gilligan review – scepticism v superstition

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‘Dracula’s castle’ offers tourists Covid shots

Visitors to Bran Castle in Romania offered vaccines – with a free trip to the ‘torture chamber’ thrown in

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Visitors to Romania’s forbidding Bran Castle, which styles itself as the inspiration for Dracula’s lair, are being jabbed with needles rather than vampire fangs in a coronavirus vaccination drive.

“I came to visit the castle with my family and when I saw the poster I gathered up my courage and agreed to get the injection,” said Liviu Necula, a 39-year-old engineer.

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Raid on Dieppe masked secret mission to steal Nazis’ Enigma machine

A new book tells story of doomed intelligence operation overseen by Lord Mountbatten and future James Bond writer Ian Fleming

Two years after ordering the mass internment of German refugees at the start of the second world war, the British government put a small, elite group of them in military uniforms and sent them on a secret cloak-and-dagger mission to occupied Dieppe to snatch an Enigma coding machine from under the Nazis’ noses.

A new book published later this month presents extraordinary evidence that the refugees, all Germans who had fled from Nazi-annexed Sudetenland, were at the centre of military planning for the daring and ultimately disastrous August 1942 raid on Dieppe. The idea was that while British and Canadian troops staged a frontal assault on the port, a group of five refugee soldiers would break into a hotel used by Nazi military commanders and steal both the Enigma machine and the code books that enabled the Germans to send encrypted military communications across Europe.

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Unseen lockets reveal grief that haunted Charles Dickens’s writing

Tokens of affection were exchanged with sister-in-law whose early death influenced the author’s work

A pair of exchanged lockets might look like evidence of an illicit romance. But two such “highly personal and private” tokens of affection – one containing a lock of Charles Dickens’s hair and the other of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth – are actually proof of something more tragic and complex, according to the curator of an exhibition to open next month in Dickens’s former central London home.

“We are enormously pleased to be showing these previously unseen items, which we acquired last year, for the first time,” said Louisa Price of the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street. “They tell a story that had a direct influence on at least one of his best known works – Oliver Twist – which he was writing when his sister-in-law, Mary, suddenly died.”

Related: The Mystery of Charles Dickens by AN Wilson review – a great writer's dark side

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‘It feels radical about women’: Nancy Mitford hits BBC One’s Sunday night slot

In The Pursuit of Love, Mitford explored shellshock, abuse and xenophobia ... but in a funny way, says director Emily Mortimer

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey … does Sunday night television need another costume drama about posh English folk who live in a big house somewhere in the countryside?

The producers of BBC One’s The Pursuit of Love would unhesitatingly say yes. But Emily Mortimer, the actor who has adapted the Nancy Mitford novel and directed the three-part series, admits she asked herself the same thing.

Related: Lily James: ‘All sorts of people can become great loves of your life’

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‘Tory quarrels and betrayals’ determined UK’s post-Brexit future, says Barnier

Revealed: EU’s chief negotiator’s diaries, The Great Illusion, gives blow-by-blow account of moves behind UK’s departure

Britain’s post-Brexit future was determined by “the quarrels, low blows, multiple betrayals and thwarted ambitions of a certain number of Tory MPs”, the EU’s chief negotiator has said in his long-awaited diaries.

The UK’s early problem, writes Michel Barnier in The Great Illusion, his 500-page account, was that they began by “talking to themselves. And they underestimate the legal complexity of this divorce, and many of its its consequences.”

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Meghan’s first book for children explores ‘bond between father and son’

Duchess of Sussex draws on her life with Prince Harry and son Archie in picture book debut The Bench, published next month

The Duchess of Sussex has written her first children’s book, to be published next month and inspired by Prince Harry and their son Archie.

In a statement Meghan said The Bench, set for release on 8 June, explores the “special bond between father and son as seen through a mother’s eyes”. The story has pictures by the award-winning illustrator Christian Robinson and will be published by Penguin Random House. Meghan will also narrate the audiobook edition.

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‘He’s got a wee spring in his step’: 92-year-old grandfather becomes bestselling poet

Gordon McCulloch’s 101 Poems becomes a hit on Amazon after his granddaughter asked her followers to take a look at the book

A self-published poetry anthology by a 92-year-old Scottish grandfather was outselling Amanda Gorman and Rupi Kaur on Amazon in the UK last week, after his granddaughter appealed to readers for reviews.

Gordon McCulloch self-published his collection, 101 Poems, on 24 March. Covering “a wide range of topics such as love, romance, relationships, religion, prayers, the meaning of life, death and our relationship with God”, it has become a surprise bestseller, last week topping the poetry anthology charts for Amazon in the UK, where it has received more than 1,000 five-star reviews. At time of publication, it is sitting at No 14 on Amazon’s UK poetry charts and No 8 in the US.

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‘I’m bursting with fiction’: Alan Moore announces five-volume fantasy epic

Exclusive: Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer lands six-figure deal for fantasy quintet Long London and short story collection

Two years after announcing that he had retired from comics, Alan Moore, the illustrious author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, has signed a six-figure deal for a “groundbreaking” five-volume fantasy series as well as a “momentous” collection of short stories.

Bloomsbury, home to the Harry Potter novels, acquired what it described as two “major” projects from the 67-year-old. The first, Illuminations, is a short story collection which will be published in autumn 2022 and which moves from the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the “Boltzmann brains” fashioning the universe. Bloomsbury said it was “dazzlingly original and brimming with energy”, promising a series of “beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic”.

Related: Goodbye, Alan Moore: the king of comics bows out

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‘Silenced’ voice of Great War poet to be heard for first time

Ivor Gurney’s writings from an asylum were ignored. But a new study reveals their genius

While he was locked up in an asylum, the great war poet and composer Ivor Gurney wrote hundreds of songs and poems that have never been seen or heard in public.

Dismissed as “too crazy” to publish during his lifetime, they reveal a startling new side to Gurney’s genius, according to a new biography of the poet, Dweller in Shadows – A Life of Ivor Gurney by Dr Kate Kennedy, that comprehensively considers his unpublished work for the first time.

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A drop of hope: new poetry exhibition celebrates power of Covid vaccine

Works inspired by messages from staff, volunteers and jab recipients will go on display at the Francis Crick Institute in London

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Throughout the pandemic, the Francis Crick Institute in London has been closely involved: first with the research, and then with the fightback, once it had opened as a key vaccination hub. But from this weekend, the renowned biomedical research facility, the base of Nobel prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, will also become the venue for a major poetic response to Covid-19.

Staff, volunteers and neighbours, along with those just coming to the institute for their jab, have all been invited to write words that capture their feelings about the disease and the role of science. These messages, written on postcards, have been used as the inspiration for a series of poems that will be arranged in a large rainbow display.

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How Holbein left clever clue in portrait to identify Henry VIII’s queen

New evidence shows miniature long held to be of Catherine Howard could depict Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves

Created in around 1540 by Hans Holbein, court painter to Henry VIII and one of the greatest portraitists of all time, the miniature is a prized treasure in the Royal Collection. But the sitter is unknown, with the artefact long catalogued merely as “Portrait of a Lady, perhaps Catherine Howard”, Henry VIII’s fifth queen.

Now, as a result of fresh research, she has been given a new identity: that of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Art historian Franny Moyle has amassed evidence to show that this is the face of the noblewoman whom the king married in 1540 to form a political alliance.

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A real Line of Duty: the London police officer who ‘went bent’

TV series finale coincides with true crime book launch about notoriously corrupt DS Derek Ridgewell

As Line of Duty completes its successful and possibly final series, just how close to reality was it?

As it happens, the end of the run coincides with the publication of Rot at the Core, an in-depth investigation into the life and times of one of Britain’s most spectacularly corrupt police officers, whose career ended in disgrace before his death in a prison cell.

Related: Ex-police reveal bribes and threats used to cover up corruption in 70s London

Rot at the Core, by Graham Satchwell and Winston Trew, is published by the History Press on 3 May

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Salman Rushdie and Bernardine Evaristo on shortlist for more diverse exam texts

OCR board asks teachers to vote on books to make A-level and GCSE English courses more inclusive

Salman Rushdie will go head to head with Jean Rhys and Daphne du Maurier as teachers vote on new works to be included in A-level and GCSE courses, as part of an effort to diversify the range of authors studied in English lessons.

The OCR examination board is considering five works to be added to its A-level English literature course next year, as well as new drama for its GCSE English literature course.

Related: Penguin launches project to boost diversity in GCSE reading lists

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