Publishing Company Blog: July 2018

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Traces on George Orwell letter suggest he caught TB from Spanish hospital

Scientist claims it is likely that the illness that killed the novelist was contracted after he was wounded in the Spanish civil war

Scientific tests carried out on a letter sent by George Orwell shortly after his return from the Spanish civil war have suggested he may have caught the tuberculosis that killed him in a Spanish hospital.

The letter, written after the author came home from fighting against Franco’s fascist uprising in July 1937, was sent by Orwell to Sergey Dinamov, the editor of the Soviet journal Foreign Literature. It was tested by Gleb Zilberstein, a scientist who has previously identified traces of kidney disease on the manuscript of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Although it is well known that Orwell died from a haemorrhage caused by tuberculosis, it has not been clear where he caught it.

Rare medieval bible returned to shelf at Canterbury Cathedral

Small illuminated volume lost to monastic library in 16th century bought for £100,000

A 13th century bible, one of a handful of books which survived intact when the library of Canterbury Cathedral was broken up at the time of the Reformation, is back in the building after almost 500 years.

The Lyghfield bible - named for a monk at the cathedral who once owned it - is the only complete bible and the finest illuminated book known to have survived from the medieval collection. The cathedral won a grant of almost £96,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and raised £4,000 more to buy it at a recent rare books sale in London.

'Spectacular' ancient public library discovered in Germany

Remains of grand building that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls uncovered in central Cologne, dating back to second century AD

The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne.

The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany’s oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Haruki Murakami 'cannot oppose' death penalty for doomsday cult killers

Japanese novelist, whose book Underground charted the impact of the 1995 sarin gas attack, says he is unable to argue with judicial killing in this case

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has said that he cannot publicly oppose Japan’s execution of the doomsday cult members behind the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack, despite being against the death penalty.

In a rare essay, published in the Mainichi Shimbun on Sunday, Murakami said that “as a general argument, I adopt a stance of opposition toward the death penalty”, pointing to the number of wrongful convictions which mean that “the death penalty, literally, can be described as an institution with fatal dangers”.

Friday, July 27, 2018

'Dire statistics' show YA fiction becoming less diverse, warns report

Study finds that, since 2010, fewer books for young adults by black and minority ethnic authors have been published in the UK

Despite a raft of diversity initiatives, the percentage of young adult books written by black and minority ethnic (BME) authors has declined steadily since 2010, according to a new study warning that the UK’s “outdated” publishing culture must take rapid action to address a systemic problem in its ranks.

The research is “evidence of what many people already suspected: people of colour are terribly under-represented in books and bookish jobs”, according to its author Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold at University College London. It follows hot on the heels of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education’s report into character diversity in children’s books, which showed only 1% of books published in the UK last year had a BME main protagonist.

If you feel that literary Britain doesn’t have space for you and your voice, you’re not going to grow up to be a writer

Penelope Lively webchat – post your questions now

'Lost chapters' of Malcolm X's autobiography sold at auction

Portions of the civil rights activist’s landmark book, reportedly too controversial to publish at the time, have been acquired by New York Public Library

“Lost” material from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, reportedly seen as too controversial to publish in the 1960s, has emerged this week at an auction in New York.

Along with the original typed manuscript, which reveals the back and forth between the black activist and his collaborator Alex Haley, to whom he told his story, the unpublished writing was put up for sale on Thursday by New York auctioneer Guernsey’s. The papers, including an unpublished chapter and a series of unpublished pages, were acquired by the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Magical German art, punk protesters and Edinburgh curiosities – the week in art

Hard-hitting works by Weimar iconoclasts, Yoko Ono lends support to Pussy Riot, and Lucy Skaer explores the desire to collect – all in our weekly dispatch

Magic Realism
Otto Dix and George Grosz are among the iconoclasts in this exhibition of the hard-hitting art of Weimar-era Germany.
• Tate Modern, London, until 14 July 2019

James Patterson remains UK libraries' most borrowed author for 11th year

While readers in east England prefer romance, and those in the south-west want their books to be by Roald Dahl, figures show the US thriller king has kept his throne

While library users in London and the north cannot get enough of tales of blood and violence, it has emerged that borrowers in the south and east prefer the thrills supplied by romantic novels.

According to data released by the Public Lending Right (PLR), thrillers – and in particular thrillers by James Patterson – continue to exert an inexorable pull for the majority of the UK’s library users. The US powerhouse, who publishes multiple titles every year, has been named the most borrowed author from UK libraries for the 11th year in a row.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Trinidadian Creole tale wins 2018 Commonwealth short story prize

Judges praise Passage by Kevin Jared Hosein as ‘all a reader could want from a short story’

A tale written in Trinidadian Creole that was inspired by the true story of a family who cremated a baby in the wilds of the island, has been plucked from more than 5,000 entries to win the Commonwealth short story prize.

In Passage, Kevin Jared Hosein writes of a man who hears a story in a bar about a family living away from society, and sets out to find them. “A man is so small in the wilderness, believe me. The way how people is now, we ain’t tailored to live there. So when Stew say he stumble across a house in the middle of the mountain, my ears prick up. I take in every word as he describe it. A daub and wattle house in the middle of a clearing, walls slabbed with sticks and clay and dung and straw, topped with a thatch roof,” writes Hosein, in Trinidadian English Creole, a choice he had initially thought would put people off.

One of Jane Austen's earliest buyers revealed as Prince Regent – who she 'hated'

Archives reveal that the future King George IV had a taste for fiction, and bought Sense and Sensibility two days before it was first advertised in 1811

In an irony worthy of the great novelist herself, a PhD student has discovered that one of the first purchasers of Jane Austen’s debut novel Sense and Sensibility was the Prince Regent – a man the author despised.

Nicholas Foretek, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, was delving through Windsor Castle’s Royal Archives as part of his research into 18th-century printing and publications when he came across a bill of sale revealing that the future King George IV bought a copy of Sense and Sensibility for 15 shillings from his booksellers, Becket & Porter. The purchase was made on 28 October 1811 – two days before the first public advertisement for the novel appeared. Published anonymously, Sense and Sensibility was not an immediate hit, only selling through its first print run by summer 1813 after positive reviews.

Top 10 tales from the frontier

From Peter Carey to Cormac McCarthy, these are some of the most compelling depictions of a territory where both danger and discovery lie

From wild tales of exploration to the pioneers of the old west, from post-apocalyptic wastelands to the far reaches of space, the idea of the frontier has enthralled authors and readers for more than a century. The word alone evokes a boundary, a crossing, a limit of known experience beyond which discovery and danger lurk. In the emptiness of the frontier, we find characters reduced to their most basic selves, the comforts and trappings of the modern world stripped away to leave them with startlingly elemental choices: death or survival; morality or corruption; love or hate. We also find them pitted, more often than not, against their environment. Whether hostile or benign, the landscape becomes a character in itself.

In my case, the frontier was the Australian outback. Only Killers and Thieves is set in a dark period of colonial history, on the late 19th-century Queensland frontier, where two young brothers are drawn into a quest for retribution that will define both their relationship and their lives. In writing the book, I travelled with them through a beautiful yet brutal terrain. Perhaps that is also part of the frontier novel’s appeal: in our ultra-connected world there is nowhere that can’t be visited, either in person or online – but these stories can still transport us to distant times and places and make them urgently real.

Haruki Murakami's new novel declared 'indecent' by Hong Kong censors

Ruling says Killing Commendatore must be wrapped with warnings of unsuitability and restricted to an adult readership

The latest novel from Haruki Murakami, Japan’s most celebrated literary export, has fallen foul of censors in Hong Kong, where it was ruled to be indecent by a tribunal and removed from display at a book fair.

Hong Kong’s Obscene Articles Tribunal announced last week that the Chinese-language edition of Murakami’s Kishidancho Goroshi, or Killing Commendatore, had been temporarily classified as “Class II – indecent materials”, according to the South China Morning Post. This means that it can only be sold in bookshops with its cover wrapped with a notice warning about its contents, with access restricted to those over the age of 18. The ruling has also seen the novel pulled from booths at the Hong Kong book fair, where a spokesperson said the novel had been removed proactively after last week’s ruling.

Brisbane writers' festival under fire after Germaine Greer and Bob Carr 'disinvited'

Event disputes accusations by Melbourne University Press that dropping the pair from its program was an attack on free speech

The Brisbane writers’ festival has disputed accusations by the publisher of Germaine Greer and Bob Carr that the decision to “disinvite” the pair from this year’s event was an attack on free speech.

Melbourne University Press publisher Louise Adler said dropping the controversial feminist and the outspoken former New South Wales premier from the September program “seems counter to the ethos of freedom of speech”.

To be uninvited to what is possibly the dreariest literary festival in the world ... is a great relief

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

First edition of Ada Lovelace's pioneering algorithm sold for £95,000

Rare book by ‘world’s first computer programmer’ contains a groundbreaking method for calculating Bernouilli numbers

An “extremely rare” leather-bound copy of Ada Lovelace’s pioneering computer program has been sold at auction for nearly £100,000.

First published in 1843, the book contains Lovelace’s translation of paper from the Italian mathematician LF Menabrea discussing Charles Babbage’s plans for a computing machine. It also includes her reflections as well as explanatory notes featuring a groundbreaking algorithm, considered by some experts to be the first computer program.

Monday, July 23, 2018

Man Booker prize 2018 longlist includes graphic novel for the first time

Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, which explores the disappearance of a young woman, ‘does just what good fiction should do’ – and will compete with Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight

A graphic novel about a vanished young woman and a thriller about a vanished mother have elbowed their way on to a giant-slaying Man Booker prize longlist that “capture[s] something about a world on the brink”.

Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, the first graphic novel ever to reach the Booker longlist, explores the chilling effect of 24-hour news after a girl has disappeared. Judges picked it as a contender for the £50,000 prize ahead of titles from former winners including Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Peter Carey and Alan Hollinghurst, describing it as “oblique, subtle [and] minimal” and saying the “changing shape of fiction” meant it was only a matter of time before a graphic novel made the cut.

Dr Seuss's Lorax 'inspired by orange Kenyan monkeys'

Moustachioed animals’ relationship with whistling thorn acacia trees resembles that of the Lorax with truffulas, researchers say

“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees,” says the eponymous hairy hero of Dr Seuss’s children’s book after he climbs out of the stump of a truffula tree. An irate orange figure with a bristling moustache, the Lorax is an environmental activist who wastes no time in berating the axe-wielding Once-ler, a shady money-grabbing interloper who lays waste to the environment to produce peculiar knitted outfits called thneeds.

Now researchers say the book may have been inspired by the things Seuss saw on a trip to Kenya, and that the bristly character may have been based on the orange moustachioed patas monkeys indigenous to the area.

Related: In praise of Dr Seuss

Sunday, July 22, 2018

'Twaddle': librarians respond to suggestion Amazon should replace libraries

Piece in Forbes magazine said libraries ‘don’t have the same value they used to’ and cost taxpayers too much

Librarians are in uproar after an article in Forbes magazine proposed replacing all public libraries in the US with Amazon bookstores.

Panos Mourdoukoutas, a professor of economics at LIU Post in New York, wrote for Forbes that libraries “don’t have the same value they used to” and should be replaced permanently by Amazon book shops.

My Los Angeles Public Library card allows me access to all you mentioned and more. Today we offered a genealogy workshop, indigenous writers conference, puppet show, tai chi class and travel craft in one location. My cost in taxes? 37 CENTS.

Abraham Lincoln educated himself at a library. So did Malcolm X. Scientists, historians, researchers of all types depend on libraries. Compared to the funding that libraries receive, the payoff they provide is huge. You can't know which kid will go on to change the world. /end

Cost to individually buy the six books I have on hold this week: $70

Amount the Altadena Library Special Parcel Tax cost me this week: 75¢

Someone help me budget this, I'm not the chair of an economics department.

Maybe @Forbes doesn’t like that you can download their magazine free with your #SF library card. https://t.co/vqQk1BDMZE

Visit your local library for one day. Sit and watch who comes in to use the services — it’s not just people checking out free books. It’s one of few places in our society where the underserved can be treated with dignity and respect. It’s WiFi. It’s translators. It’s kindness.

You know what I have done in a library? Received free advice on starting a small business. Learned how to use a 3d printer. Attended a coding group. (Actually been to various types of group meetings.) Gone to various talks. Taught people to knit.

Another thing re the Forbes article on libraries: I learned to program computers from a book at my local library in Minnesota. My high school didn't have a CS class (or computers, really). Ended up with a BS and PhD in CS and 9 years at Google, all because of my local library.

Library. A room, set of rooms, or building where books may be read or borrowed.

E.g. A Forbes writer says Amazon should replace the local library. https://t.co/MkLwScxdAR https://t.co/mEaof5AGUs

The husband also rises: Mr Paula Deen wins Hemingway lookalike contest

Michael Groover shows importance of being Ernest
Key West bar has held its immoveable feast since 1981

After nine tries, the husband of celebrity chef Paula Deen has won the Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, which is held annually in the Florida city where the writer lived and worked in the 1930s.

I nearly quit ‘ugly’ social media, says Kuenssberg

BBC’s political editor tells of being plagued by online abuse and threats

Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, no longer reads online comments about her broadcast coverage and has been close to leaving social media because of the vitriol levelled at her.

In admissions made to the author Tom Baldwin, she said: “I’ve tried to pull back and I’ve thought about coming off it all together. Partly, that’s because it’s uglier out there now; it’s like a playground where people want to shout each other down. I don’t read the comments people write about me – it’s not worth it.” Kuenssberg, an early advocate of involving the public in news coverage through social media, told Baldwin that her attitude had changed during the period when she was targeted by political websites.

Friday, July 20, 2018

Taylor Swift to star in Tom Hooper's Cats movie

Singer-songwriter to take first major acting role, alongside Ian McKellen, James Corden and Jennifer Hudson, in Hooper’s adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical

Taylor Swift is to take her first lead acting role in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, directed by Tom Hooper.

Swift, 28, has one significant screen credit to her name: she voiced the environmentalist Audrey in the 2012 animation The Lorax. She is expected to actually appear on screen – albeit wearing paws and whiskers – in the film, which will begin production later this year in London.

Our obsession with sci-fi technology: Chips with Everything podcast

In July 2018 a Dutch company showcased what it calls the first ever flying car already fit for purpose, at the Farnborough Airshow. But do we need flying cars in our lives?

Subscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter, or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.

Any time technology throws up a new problem for society, you’re guaranteed to see someone say, “We were promised flying cars. Instead we got this.”

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Colleen McCullough’s husband wins legal battle over $2.1m estate

The author’s agent had argued McCullough intended to leave her estate to a US university

The widowed husband of Australian author Colleen McCullough, whose 1977 best-selling novel The Thorn Birds became a smash hit television miniseries, has won a bitter legal dispute over her estate after a court found in his favour on Friday.

Ric Robinson had been battling McCullough’s executor over whether the author intended to leave her estate to him or to the University of Oklahoma, where his wife had been a board member.

Related: Colleen McCullough obituary

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio turned down Brokeback Mountain

Original director Gus Van Sant has revealed that multiple A-listers turned down the chance to star in the gay romance

Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Ryan Phillippe were among the actors who turned down roles in Brokeback Mountain, the gay romance that catapulted Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal to stardom.

Gus Van Sant, the director who has frequently collaborated with Damon, revealed in an interview with IndieWire that the film – about two two men hired to herd sheep in Wyoming – proved strikingly challenging to cast. “Nobody wanted to do it,” said Van Sant. “I was working on it, and I felt like we needed a really strong cast, like a famous cast. That wasn’t working out. I asked the usual suspects: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Ryan Phillippe. They all said no.”

Manchester University students paint over Rudyard Kipling mural

Students say poet is ‘well-known racist’ and replace poem If with Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise

Students at the University of Manchester have painted over a mural of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, arguing that the writer “dehumanised people of colour”.

The poem If, written around 1895, had been painted on the wall of the university’s newly refurbished students’ union. But students painted over the verses, replacing them with the 1978 poem Still I Rise by the American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.

Filming begins on Jacqueline Wilson's Four Kids and It

Film of writer’s 2012 novel has cast that includes Sir Michael Caine and Bill Nighy

Her children’s books have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Now filming is about to begin on the first feature film adaptation of one of Dame Jacqueline Wilson’s novels.

Four Kids And It, a family adventure story, has a cast that includes Sir Michael Caine, Bill Nighy, Matthew Goode and Russell Brand.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Book sales skyrocket but authors report shrinking incomes

Calls for writers to reap rewards as British publishers enjoy record-breaking year

A record-breaking year for publishers has been greeted with renewed demands for authors to receive a bigger slice of income and investment, as sales of books passed the £5.7bn mark in 2017.

Book sales were up 5% on the previous year, according to annual figures released by the Publishers Association. In sharp contrast, a recent survey of authors’ earnings revealed a 42% drop over the last decade, with the median annual income now below £10,500.

Arthur C Clarke award goes to 'classic' novel exploring the limits of pregnancy

Anne Charnock’s novel Dreams Before the Start of Time, which focuses on changing reproductive science, hailed as ‘rich but unshowy’ by judges

A novel set in a world where infertility has been eradicated and artificial wombs have become the preferred method of gestation has won this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction.

Beginning in London in 2034, Anne Charnock’s Dreams Before the Start of Time examines the reproductive decisions of several characters in the same group of families, over multiple generations. Two friends, Millie and Toni, bear children who will in turn experience very different methods of birth over the following decades – in one case, adopting an orphan who was left to gestate in an artificial womb; in another, a man who creates a daughter using only his DNA.

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Arthur C Clarke award goes to 'classic' novel exploring the limits of pregnancy

Anne Charnock’s novel Dreams Before the Start of Time, which focuses on changing reproductive science, hailed as ‘rich but unshowy’ by judges

A novel set in a world where infertility has been eradicated and artificial wombs have become the preferred method of gestation has won this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

UK must take lead on nuclear weapons | Letters

The tide towards annihilation can be turned if the political will is there, writes CND general secretary Kate Hudson

As your article on nuclear weapons states (All you wanted to know about nuclear war but were too afraid to ask, 16 July), the use of a nuclear weapons is now more likely than at any time since the cold war. Billions are being spent on modernising superpower nuclear arsenals. The old “deterrence” myth – that they will never be used – is still being deployed, but at the same time Trump is unveiling plans for new “usable” nuclear weapons, and outlining more scenarios in which to use them.

With Trump’s tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal, the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East are increasing. The possibility of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula hangs on a thread – a return to threat and counter-threat is an ever-present danger, with potentially catastrophic consequences. But this tide towards annihilation can be turned if the political will is there. Maybe we can’t expect that from the trigger-happy US president, but we should demand it from our own government.

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Batwoman: lesbian superhero gets her own TV show

The show, based on the DC Comics character, will boast the first openly gay lead of a live-action superhero show

A small screen adaptation of Batwoman is in development with an openly gay lead.

The show will launch on the CW, adding to the network’s slate of shows based on DC Comics, which includes Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Black Lightning.

Monday, July 16, 2018

Only 1% of UK children's books feature main characters of colour

Research finds that of 9,115 titles published last year, only 4% featured BAME characters, the figure falling to 1% for heroes and heroines

Only 1% of British children’s books feature a main character who is black or minority ethnic, a investigation into representations of people of colour has found, with the director calling the findings “stark and shocking”.

In a research project that is the first of its kind, and funded by Arts Council England, the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) asked UK publishers to submit books featuring BAME characters in 2017. Of the 9,115 children’s books published last year, researchers found that only 391 – 4% - featured BAME characters. Just 1% had a BAME main character, and a quarter of the books submitted only featured diversity in their background casts.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Retail chain The Works plans £100m stock market float

Owners and management of cut-price books, crafts and toy seller in line for £36.7m payout

The cut-price books, crafts and toys chain The Works has shrugged off the troubles on the high street with plans for a £100m stock market listing that will hand its private equity owners and management a £36.7m payout.

Its chief executive, Kevin Keaney, said the 447-strong chain was aiming to open 50 more outlets a year as the market was “crying out for a really family-friendly retailer”.

Stig of the Dump author Clive King dies aged 94

Alongside some 20 other books, his 1963 story of a stone-age hunter living in modern-day Kent sold more than 2m copies and has never been out of print

The writer Clive King, creator of the much-loved children’s classic Stig of the Dump, has died aged 94.

A career that began in 1958 – with Hamid of Aleppo, a book for younger children about a hamster – stretched over five decades, with King writing for the children’s theatre as well as publishing more than 20 books. But it was the stone-age hunter living in a chalk pit on the Downs who captured the imagination of generations, with Stig appearing in television adaptations in both 1981 and 2002.

The best recent science fiction – reviews roundup

The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri; 2001: An Odyssey in Words edited by Ian Whates and Tom Hunter; Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi; The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer and One of Us by Craig DiLouie

Francesco Dimitri’s The Book of Hidden Things (Titan, £8.99) rapidly draws the reader into the story of four childhood friends, now in their 30s. Every year for almost two decades they have met up in their hometown, the small Italian village of Casalfranco. When Arturo, at whose insistence this pact was formed, fails to show up, the three concerned friends investigate and discover that he’s been leading a secret life: not only has he been growing marijuana on a large scale, but he has supposedly cured a young girl of leukaemia. They also learn that he’s written a manuscript entitled The Book of Hidden Things, which suggests that he has access to a world hidden from our own. But is his disappearance connected to this manuscript and an event in his childhood, when he vanished for a week and returned very much changed, or is there a more mundane explanation? Dimitri’s first novel in English, written with breezy fluency, is an affecting fable of friendship, magic and nostalgia.

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Thursday, July 12, 2018

Hayley Atwell to star in BBC series of Andrea Levy's The Long Song

Tamara Lawrance and Lenny Henry will also appear in series on last days of slavery in Jamaica

Hayley Atwell and Sir Lenny Henry will star in a TV adaptation of Andrea Levy’s bestselling novel The Long Song, the BBC has announced.

The three-part series will also star Tamara Lawrance and Jack Lowden.

The Alternative Nobel: vote now for a surprising new literature prize

Swedish librarians have drawn up their longlist for the New Academy’s take on the world’s biggest books award. And it really is new

Sweden’s librarians have spoken: a wonderfully eclectic lineup of authors has emerged on a long-ish longlist for the New Academy’s alternative to the postponed 2018 Nobel prize for literature.

Traditionally awarded in autumn by the opaque and austere Swedish Academy, the Nobel was called off in March due to an ongoing sex scandal – and swiftly replaced when a group of the country’s cultural figures decided that the “world’s greatest literature prize” should still be awarded. “In a time when human values are increasingly being called into question,” the New Academy’s solemn opener read, “literature becomes an even more important counterforce to stop the culture of silence and oppression.”

Emmett Till: US reopens investigation into killing, citing new information

Justice department is reinvestigating brutal death in 1955 of a black teen in Money, Mississippi after closing case in 2007

The US federal government has reopened its investigation into the death of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement more than 60 years ago.

The justice department told Congress in a report in March it is reinvestigating Till’s slaying in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after receiving “new information”. The case was closed in 2007 with authorities saying the suspects were dead; a state grand jury didn’t file any new charges.

Pepe the Frog removed from Daily Stormer after creator makes legal challenge

Matt Furie, whose ‘peaceful frog-dude’ was adopted by extremists, wins copyright action against neo-Nazi website but lawyers describe ‘whack-a-mole’ struggle to eliminate its use

The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has succeeded in having images of his character, which has been adopted against his wishes as a symbol by the far right, removed from neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer.

Sean Spicer contradicts Trump's Manafort claims in new book

Exclusive: Trump’s former press secretary describes Manafort as impactful and describes the president as ‘a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow’

Dreamily envisioning Donald Trump as “a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow”, former press secretary Sean Spicer has filled a new book with breathless memories of his role in recent American history – while admitting that Paul Manafort, suspected of being a tool of Moscow, played a central role in the Trump campaign.

A friend of mine and a man who has truly seen politics and life as few others ever will, Sean Spicer, has written a great new book, “The Briefing: Politics, the Press and the President.” It is a story told with both heart and knowledge. Really good, go get it!

‘Sean, have you seen the news?’ The president was clear: this needed to be addressed – now ... I assumed that was the approach the president would want to see again: strong, aggressive, no questions. I was wrong.”

I went back to my office, expecting an ‘attaboy’ from the president; instead Reince was waiting for me and said the president wasn’t happy at all with how I had performed. He didn’t like my not taking questions. He thought I was hung up on the wrong issues. He wanted to know why I hadn’t run my statement by him. Minutes later, the president himself called, and he was not pleased. And I started to wonder if my first day would be my last ...

I had made a bad first impression, and looking back, that was the beginning of the end.

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Earliest extract of Homer's epic poem Odyssey unearthed

Clay slab believed to date from 3rd century AD discovered near ancient city of Olympia

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient tablet engraved with 13 verses of the Odyssey in the ancient city of Olympia, southern Greece, in what could be the earliest record of the epic poem, the Greek culture ministry said.

Original Winnie-the-Pooh map sets world record at auction

EH Shepard’s 1926 sketch, which was unseen for almost 50 years, sells for £430,000

The original map of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood by the artist EH Shepard has set a world record for a book illustration sold at auction, selling for £430,000.

The 1926 sketch, which was privately owned and had been unseen for nearly half a century, introduced readers to the world of Christopher Robin and his friends in the original book.

Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon to be adapted by ITV

Andrew Davies, whose credits include War and Peace and Pride and Prejudice, will bring Austen’s last novel to the small screen

Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon is being adapted into an ITV series by Pride and Prejudice screenwriter Andrew Davies.

The final incomplete novel about a young woman, Charlotte Heywood, who moves to the sleepy seaside village of Sanditon and meets a man who is trying to turn it into a fashionable resort, was written only months before Austen died in 1817, and has never been adapted before.

Richard and Judy under fire from Book Club creator

Couple accused of using club’s integrity to make money

The creator of the Richard and Judy Book Club has criticised the television presenters for embarking on a commercial relationship with WH Smith, saying they had “used the integrity “ of their hugely successful book club to make money.

In an interview with Radio Times, Amanda Ross, who now runs the Zoe Ball Book Club, suggested that their decision was prompted by the financial success of the featured writers.

Monday, July 9, 2018

Stan Lee drops 'confusing' $1bn lawsuit against his former company

The comic book creator has terminated a suit against Pow! Entertainment over claims that he was conned into signing over rights to his identity and likeness

Stan Lee has dropped a $1bn lawsuit against his former company Pow! Entertainment over claims he was conned as part of a “nefarious scheme”.

In May, the 95-year-old Marvel superhero creator launched the suit against the company’s co-founder Gill Champion and its CEO, Shane Duffy, after it was alleged that Lee had been tricked into signing a document giving away rights to use his name and likeness.

If you only read one book this summer … make it this one

Do you feel like brushing up on politics? Trying a historical novel or some sci-fi? if you can’t choose from our summer book special, try our shortlist of absolute must reads

Literary page turner
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
Sophocles’s Antigone is remodelled for a searingly contemporary tale of state violence, Islamist radicalisation and family duty in this year’s Women’s prize winner.

Beach read
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Catch up on the witty Irish debut about getting along with other people and getting to know yourself before Rooney’s second novel in September.

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Tab Hunter, 1950s Hollywood heart-throb, dies aged 86

Hunter embodied the clean-cut ‘beefcake’ image but was forced to deny his gay sexuality for years

Tab Hunter, the actor who found fame in the 1950s as a Hollywood heartthrob but who was forced to cover up his gay sexuality, has died aged 86. A Facebook account for Tab Hunter Confidential, a recently released documentary about him, posted the news, but did not give a cause of death.

Born Arthur Andrew Kelm in 1931, Hunter broke into movies in the 1950 film noir The Lawless after a spell in the coastguard as a teenager: he was given his screen alias by agent Henry Willson, who specialised in the pretty-boy “beefcake” stars of the time, such as Rock Hudson, Chad Everett, and Troy Donahue.

Stolen WB Yeats letters identified at Princeton University

Collection taken in 1970s and returned by ‘anonymous’ was spotted by John Kelly

A collection of unpublished letters written by WB Yeats that was stolen in the 1970s and returned “anonymously” has been identified at Princeton University.

John Kelly, who has spent decades tracking down thousands of Yeats’s letters, discovered the collection as he was concluding research for the latest volume of his work on the Irish poet and dramatist.

Sunday, July 8, 2018

The English Patient wins public poll of best Man Booker in 50 years

Golden Booker names Michael Ondaatje’s bestselling novel as public’s favourite winner

Twenty six years ago, the panel of judges were so unsure who should win the Man Booker in 1992 that they ended up with a tie: Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth. But on Sunday evening Ondaatje edged ahead, with his bestselling novel The English Patient being named the best winner of the Booker prize of the last 50 years, in a public vote.

Man Booker prizewinners criticise decision to allow US writers to enter

Peter Carey calls rule change ‘exercise in corporate branding’ and Julian Barnes says it is ‘daft’

Peter Carey and Julian Barnes have shared their doubts about the future of the Man Booker prize over its decision to allow American writers to enter, with Carey calling it “an exercise in global corporate branding” and Barnes labelling it “daft”.

Speaking at an event to mark 50 years of the prize at the Southbank Centre in London, the Australian author Carey – who won the prestigious literary prize for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001 – said he felt the rule change had reduced the chances for Commonwealth authors.

German author sues Random House for not releasing book on Islam

Munich court to hear dispute between former central banker Thilo Sarrazin and publisher

A controversial German author is taking Random House to court over the publishing house’s decision not to release his latest book on Islam.

The dispute between the publisher and Thilo Sarrazin, a former central banker and Berlin state finance minister, will be heard before a court in Munich on Monday.

Saturday, July 7, 2018

'The problem is the reader': Howard Jacobson says the novel is not dead

Writer laments short attention spans and decline of nuanced criticism in age of social media

In the face of plummeting sales of literary fiction, the writer Howard Jacobson has declared that the novel is not dead: the problem is the modern reader, who apparently lacks the attention span to enjoy the intellectual challenge of reading.

In a speech, which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme on Thursday, Jacobson lamented the distractions facing today’s reader and the decline of nuanced criticism that had come with didactic social media.

Friday, July 6, 2018

JK Rowling attacked for saying Scottish nationalism 'contains traces of bigotry'

Harry Potter author provokes an internet storm after tweeting that she was tired of ‘blood and soil nationalists marching with’ civic campaigners

JK Rowling has provoked the anger of Scottish nationalists by saying she is “mighty tired” of their “insistence that their nationalism is nothing like the other, nasty kinds, in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary”.

Rowling, who lives in Scotland, was responding to a column in the National by Lesley Riddoch that said: “Setting the English up as our automatic enemy doesn’t help us walk away from the Union mindset or its relentless pecking order. And yet like a packet of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes scoffed with cold milk late at night – it’s almost irresistible.”

Nor does this kind of talk, from a self-proclaimed Scottish nationalist, quite square with the proud boast that 'our' nationalism is purer and better. pic.twitter.com/1APkzm3SlV

Philip Pullman attacks 'monstrous' English education policy

The His Dark Materials novelist says current ‘fetish’ for exams is unnecessary and could ruin children’s lives

The government’s “complete fetish” for exams is badly wrong, according toPhilip Pullman, who believes the focus on testing will “ruin children’s lives”.

The His Dark Materials novelist told the Press Association that those in charge of education today “seem to think the function of a book … is to provide exercises for grammar and it’s not, of course. The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.”

Sigmund Freud to hunt down a serial killer in new Netflix series

Austrian thriller will feature the father of psychoanalysis solving a murder case along with a psychic partner

Sigmund Freud is to become a Sherlock-style sleuth in a new Austrian drama backed by Netflix.

German-language series Freud will see a young version of the neurologist join forces with a police inspector and a medium to hunt down a serial killer terrorising 19th-century Vienna.

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Stormzy launches publishing imprint, #Merky Books, with Penguin Random House

The chart-topping grime star will publish his own book, Rise Up, with the new imprint, which will be ‘a platform for young writers’

Grime rapper Stormzy has announced a partnership with Penguin Random House, to set up a new publishing imprint called #Merky Books.

It will be part of a growing #Merky empire, which already encompasses a record label and music festival, and Stormzy said he was “super proud” of the collaboration. “We will be using this as a platform for young writers to become published authors,” he wrote on Instagram. “I know too many talented writers that don’t always have an outlet or a means to get their work seen and hopefully #Merky Books can now be a reference point for them to say ‘I can be an author’ and for that to be a realistic and achievable goal.”

Super proud to announce our new venture #Merky Books, a publishing imprint in collaboration with Penguin Random House @penguinukbooks We will be using this as a platform for young writers to become published authors, I know too many talented writers that don’t always have an outlet or a means to get their work seen and hopefully #Merky Books can now be a reference point for them to say “I can be an author” and for that to be a realistic and achievable goal. Reading and writing as a kid was integral to where I am today and I from the bottom of my heart can not wait to hear your stories, your poems, your novels, your sci-fis and then getting them out into the big wide world. Proper proud of this! We’ll be doing school competitions, taking entries and submissions and looking for writers as well but I’ll keep you posted! #Merky Books will also be offering a paid internship in 2019! The first book to be released under the imprint will be “Rise Up: The #Merky Journey So Far” out November 1st and available for pre order now (The link is in my bio!) ❤️

Charles I's 'message for the future' discovered in poetry book

Former University Challenge presenter Bamber Gascoigne inherited the library from which it hails and is auctioning its treasures to raise money for an arts centre

“While I breathe, I hope.” This “cryptic message” discovered in a copy of The Faerie Queene reveals it to be one of the books Charles I read during his final imprisonment. The volume is just one of the treasures from the library at West Horsley Place that the television presenter Bamber Gascoigne is selling at auction to raise money to turn it into a cultural centre.

“It just looked like an interesting first edition, probably of some value to a collector,” Gascoigne said, “but Sotheby’s cleverly discovered the writing and the phraseology meant it was one of the books Charles I had been reading while waiting for his execution.”

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Banksy offers to help save Bristol's under-threat libraries

Artist comes forward to assist council after news that 17 of city’s libraries risk closure

Banksy has offered to help transform Bristol’s under-threat library service, the city’s mayor has revealed.

The anonymous street artist, who has a track record of supporting political causes, is said to have contacted Bristol city council offering his services.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Lost José Saramago journal retrieved from his computer

Last volume of Lanzarote Diaries to be published eight years after writer’s death

A previously unknown volume of a journal by the Portuguese author José Saramago will finally come to light after being retrieved from his computer – eight years after his death and 20 years after he wrote it.

The work, written in 1998 when he won the Nobel prize for literature, is the sixth and last volume of Cuadernos de Lanzarote (Lanzarote Diaries) and will be published in October in Portugal and Spain, his widow, Pilar del Río, said Tuesday.

Emma Cline's ex-boyfriend's copyright claim dismissed

Chaz Reetz-Laiolo had alleged that her bestselling debut novel The Girls stole from his writings

A California judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by author Emma Cline’s ex-boyfriend alleging that Cline’s bestselling debut novel, The Girls, stole from his own writings and infringed his copyright.

Cline’s former partner Chaz Reetz-Laiolo’s suit, filed last November, claimed that she used spyware installed on a computer she sold him to steal from the screenplays he was writing. A countersuit from Cline acknowledged that while she had used spyware to keep track of Reetz-Laiolo during their relationship, she lost access to the software once she sold him the computer. Calling the theory that she stole unpublished work from his computer “ludicrous”, she said that her “abusive ex-boyfriend” was trying “to extract millions of dollars by intimidation and threat, all under the auspices of frivolous claims of copyright infringement”.

South Carolina police object to high-school reading list

Union says depictions of brutality in The Hate U Give and All American Boys promote distrust of police and ‘we’ve got to put a stop to that’

A police union in South Carolina has challenged the inclusion of Angie Thomas’s multiple award-winning novel about police brutality, The Hate U Give, on a school’s summer reading list, describing it as “almost an indoctrination of distrust of police”.

The intervention from the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-County Lodge #3 came after Wando high school’s ninth-grade class was asked to read one of eight novels over the summer holidays. Two of the titles upset the police union: The Hate U Give, which follows a teenage girl after she witnesses the shooting of her unarmed best friend by a police officer, and Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys, which sees a teenage boy trying to overcome his distrust of the police after he is wrongly suspected of shoplifting and then beaten by an officer.

Monday, July 2, 2018

Alternative Nobel literature prize planned in Sweden

After the Swedish Academy cancelled the traditional prize this year, the New Academy plans a parallel honour in October

The Swedish Academy is not awarding a Nobel prize for literature this year, but a group of Swedish cultural figures are coming together to bestow their own version of the world’s most prestigious literary award instead, as an act of protest at the scandal that has engulfed the academy.

The 2018 Nobel prize for literature was cancelled in May, following allegations of sexual assault made against Jean-Claude Arnault, husband of Katarina Frostenson. Frostenson is an author and a member of the Swedish Academy, the prize’s secretive jury. Arnault was charged with rape in June, but denies all the allegations.

Junot Díaz says alleged sexual harassment 'didn't happen'

Novelist insists accusation of impropriety is groundless and that he regrets not denying it immediately

Junot Díaz has categorically denied kissing the novelist Zinzi Clemmons in his first interview since he was publicly accused of inappropriate behaviour by three women.

Clemmons confronted the Pulitzer prize-winning author at the Sydney Writers festival in May, speaking from the audience during a panel discussion, later tweeting that she had invited Díaz to speak at a workshop when she was “an unknown wide-eyed 26-year-old, and he used it as an opportunity to corner and forcibly kiss me”. Clemmons’s accusation was followed by allegations from fellow writers Carmen Maria Machado and Monica Byrne, who both said that Díaz had been verbally aggressive towards them.

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahnuik review – all punched out

The Fight Club author is long past his best on the evidence of this feeble dystopian satire

To be clear at the outset: this is not a good book. There are many reasons why Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel, his first in four years, fails, but perhaps the most depressing is how stale his premise feels. A vapid Nineteen Eighty-Four for the Snapchat generation, mixed with a ghoulish touch of The Purge, the often incoherent and confused narrative revolves around the much-ballyhooed “Adjustment Day” itself, a massacre of the educated in society by the uneducated, and the resulting new order that arises.

Eschewing a central character, Palahniuk, best known for his debut, Fight Club, introduces the reader to a series of figures of varying interest and narrative importance. There is a Big Brother-esque oracle, Talbott Reynolds, who offers gnomic but essentially fascist wisdom such as: “First make yourself despicable, then indispensable”.

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