Publishing Company Blog: May 2020

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Lawyers' poems deal with trials of delivering lockdown justice

Collection published written by and dedicated to those who have kept system going

I need to get a bookcase for the background of my Zoom

I need to get a bookcase for an intellectual room

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Hilary Mantel: 'Thomas Cromwell would have locked us down for longer'

Wolf Hall author tells online Hay festival that ‘the Tudors were very good at quarantine’

Thomas Cromwell, who lost family members to “sweating sickness” as the disease spread during his years in King Henry VIII’s court, would have enforced the UK lockdown for longer than the current government, according to Hilary Mantel.

Speaking at the Hay literary festival, which is entirely online this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Wolf Hall author said the Tudors “were very good at quarantine in those days. They took it very seriously. I think he would have locked us down for a bit longer.”

Friday, May 29, 2020

'Gross incompentence at highest levels': ex-Obama adviser blasts Trump's Covid response

Samantha Power also tells online Hay festival that former US administration underestimated how ‘ripped off’ Americans felt, and discounts possibility of Michelle Obama as vice-president

The US has shown “gross incompetence … at the highest levels” in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Samantha Power, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under Barack Obama.

Speaking to Philippe Sands for the online version of the Hay festival, Power said that Donald Trump’s administration had failed to learn from the countries hit by the coronavirus before the US.

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Trump campaign attempts to remove satirical cartoon from online retailer

Cartoonist Nick Anderson calls president ‘adolescent’ after work parodying bleach-injection claim sparked a legal manoeuvre

The Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson has described Donald Trump as an “adolescent wannabe authoritarian”, after the US president’s re-election campaign failed to pull one of Anderson’s cartoons mocking Trump’s inaccurate suggestion that injecting disinfectant could protect against Covid-19.

Anderson put his cartoon The Trump Cult up for sale on the online retailer Redbubble this month. The illustration shows Trump with supporters in Maga hats, serving them a drink that has been labeled “Kool-Aid”, then “Chloroquine” and finally “Clorox”, a US bleach brand. The cartoon is a reference to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where more than 900 people died after drinking cyanide-laced punch at the order of cult leader Jim Jones, and to Trump’s widely denounced idea of injecting bleach to protect again coronavirus. Trump has also been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a protection against Covid-19, despite a study showing it has been linked to increased deaths in patients.

President Trump's campaign issued a complaint causing the removal of Nick Anderson's political cartoon from @redbubble. Today, we're leading a coalition calling on Redbubble to affirm its commitment to the First Amendment and reinstate Mr. Anderson's work. https://t.co/g3DXeNggbr pic.twitter.com/01YSnm9VWS

David Attenborough to publish 'witness statement' on climate crisis

Broadcaster and historian says A Life on Our Planet book will record ‘dreadful damage wrought by mankind’ and propose solutions

David Attenborough is to publish his “vision for the future” of Earth this autumn, laying out “the dreadful damage” done by humanity, and the ways “we can begin to turn things round”.

A Life on Our Planet, which the 94-year-old has described as his “witness statement”, will cover his career documenting the natural world and his first-hand observations of the decline of the planet’s environment and biodiversity, as well as possible solutions.

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Larry Kramer, groundbreaking author and Aids activist, dies aged 84

Kramer founded pioneering Gay Men’s Health Crisis group
Playwright and author died Wednesday morning in Manhattan

The groundbreaking American writer and tireless activist for gay rights and a national effort to tackle the HIV/Aids crisis, Larry Kramer, has died in New York.

Rest in power to our fighter Larry Kramer. Your rage helped inspire a movement. We will keep honoring your name and spirit with action. In the spirit of ACT UP, join us and chant this (three times). #ACTUPFightbackENDAIDS #ACTUPFightbackENDAIDS #ACTUPFightbackENDAIDS pic.twitter.com/4fAqeO6STW

Larry Kramer has died.
He was a noted fierce gay activist whose confrontational advocacy with @actupny helped shock our nation into confronting the AIDS crisis in the '80s and '90s. May he rest in power. pic.twitter.com/19ij73sIlA

Larry Kramer valued every gay life at a time when so many gay men had been rendered incapable of valuing our own lives. He ordered us to love ourselves and each other and to fight for our lives. He was a hero.

Don’t know a soul who saw or read The Normal Heart and came away unmoved, unchanged. What an extraordinary writer, what a life.
Thank you, Larry Kramer. pic.twitter.com/M3hA0cNrCU

Rest in power to an icon and true fighter until the very end. We thank you, Larry Kramer. https://t.co/arggtehkYx

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Johny Pitts wins Jhalak prize for 'beautiful' history of black Europe

Television presenter and musician wins £1,000 prize for writers of colour, with ‘exceptionally thoughtful’ debut Afropean

Extract from Afropean: ‘It really was another world’

Johny Pitts has won the Jhalak prize for his debut book Afropean, an examination of life in black communities across Europe.

The television presenter, photographer and musician was announced as the winner of the annual award for writers of colour in an online ceremony on Tuesday night. He won £1,000 and a trophy sculpted by artist Neda Koochakian Fard.

JK Rowling announces new children's book, The Ickabog, to be published free online

Harry Potter author announces she will serialise the fairy tale from Tuesday afternoon, so children in lockdown can read it for free before it is published in November

JK Rowling is to publish a new children’s book, a fairy tale “about truth and the abuse of power” that she has kept in her attic for years, for free online for children in lockdown.

The Ickabog, which is set in an imaginary land unrelated to any of Rowling’s other works, will be serialised online from Tuesday afternoon, in 34 daily, free instalments. It will then be published as a book, ebook and audiobook in November, with Rowling’s royalties to go to projects assisting groups impacted by the pandemic.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Sex, lies and despair: unseen letters reveal Larkin's tortured love

A cache of 2,400 letters between the poet and his long-time lover and muse, Monica Jones, charts an explosive and flawed romance

“He lied to me, the bugger, but I loved him.” So Monica Jones described the revered poet Philip Larkin – a pithy but affectionate account of a lover who was serially unfaithful, but whose “utterly undistinguished little house” in Hull she turned into a shrine after his death.

Previously unpublished letters, however, reveal the full extent of her fury, fears and frustrations over a painful four-decade-long partnership with the man who wrote some of the most cherished verse in the English language.

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Rutger Bregman: 'classic household set up' may allow abuse to go unchecked

Historian responds to increase in domestic violence in lockdown during online Hay festival talk

The surge in recorded domestic violence in recent weeks poses a big challenge to the uplifting messages about human nature now associated with the work of star author Rutger Bregman. But the bestselling Dutch historian offered some responses to the grim trend this weekend in a Hay festival conversation with the writer, actor and model Lily Cole.

The English towers and landmarks that inspired Tolkien's hobbit sagas

Book identifies middle England sources for sites of key scenes from Middle-earth books

Readers of The Lord of the Rings must surely imagine lifting their eyes in terror before Saruman’s dark tower, known as Orthanc. Over the years, many admirers of the Middle-earth sagas have guessed at the inspiration for this and other striking features of the landscape created by JRR Tolkien.

Now an extensive new study of the author’s work is to reveal the likely sources of key scenes. The idea for Saruman’s nightmarish tower, argues leading Tolkien expert John Garth, was prompted by Faringdon Folly in Berkshire.

Author Michael Rosen out of intensive care after 47 days

Wife tweets first update in two weeks, saying his recovery on the ward will take time

The poet, broadcaster and author Michael Rosen has left intensive care 47 days after he was admitted.

Rosen, 74, the author of children’s books including We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Little Rabbit Foo Foo, charted the initial stages of his illness on Twitter. He has not tweeted since late March but his wife, Emma-Louise Williams, updated wellwishers periodically while he was “very poorly”.

Books to broaden your horizons, by Hilary Mantel, Simon Schama, Lisa Taddeo and more

If you currently feel confined, reading can open up new worlds. Authors and thinkers at this year’s Hay Festival Digital recommend books to take you on a journey

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Friday, May 22, 2020

Hollywood studio behind 12 Years a Slave wins rights for 'real life Lord of the Flies'

New Regency will bring to the screen the true story of six Tongan teenagers who survived for 15 months on a remote Pacific island in the 1960s

The Hollywood studio behind 12 Years a Slave and The Revenant has won the battle for film rights to the story of the six Tongan teenagers stranded for months on an uninhabited island in the mid-1960s, dubbed as the “real-life Lord of the Flies”.

Rutger Bregman, the historian whose immensely popular article was published by the Guardian on 9 May and triggered the rights scramble, confirmed that New Regency had won the battle, after he, the four survivors still living, and Australian sailor Peter Warner who rescued them, took a collaborative decision to accept the studio’s offer.

Romance Writers of America aims for happy end to racism row with new prize

Association rips up template for prestigious annual awards after facing criticism over its record on diversity

Romance Writers of America is attempting to turn the page on a damaging racism row, abolishing its top literary prizes and replacing them with awards in a new format it hopes will show “happily ever afters are for everyone” and not just white protagonists.

The association of more than 9,000 romance writers is developing proposals to encourage more diverse winners, including training for its judges, an award for unpublished authors and processes to ensure books are judged by people familiar with each subgenre.

Gloria Steinem says TV drama of 1970s feminist history ‘ridiculous'

In interview for Hay festival feminist writer says Mrs America misrepresents equal rights movement

It stars Cate Blanchett and Rose Byrne in a glossy, big-budget TV account of 1970s feminist history but one key player who was there, Gloria Steinem, is withering: it is ridiculous, undermining and just not very good, she said on Friday.

Steinem, arguably the world’s most famous feminist, has revealed she is not a fan of the new Hulu TV show Mrs America, which premiered in the US last month and is coming to BBC2 in the UK later in the year.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Bill Clinton writing second thriller, The President's Daughter

Pair behind The President is Missing writing novel about kidnapping of a former president’s daughter

Bill Clinton is set to publish his second thriller, a crime novel which follows a former US president whose daughter is kidnapped.

Clinton, whose own daughter Chelsea Clinton is also an author and the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, is teaming up for the second time with thriller powerhouse James Patterson to co-write The President’s Daughter.

Normal People producers order Pornhub to remove pirated sex scenes

The makers of the hit BBC and Hulu series described the repurposing of footage as ‘deeply disrepectful’

The producers of the hit TV series Normal People have issued Pornhub with a takedown request after sex scenes from the programme were uploaded to the porn site. According to Variety, a 22-minute compilation was uploaded to the website last week, but was later removed. However, footage is still available on other adult websites at the time of writing.

The programme’s executive producer, Ed Guiney, told the entertainment industry website that its makers were “hugely disappointed” to see the footage end up on a porn website, adding that it was “both a violation of copyright and more importantly, it’s deeply disrespectful to the actors involved and to the wider creative team”. Variety confirmed with Pornhub that the video had been removed following a takedown request.

Orwell prize for fiction shortlist replays 2019 Booker prize contest

Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other will vie with Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport for political writing award

The clash between Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport for last year’s Booker prize is set for a replay after both novels made the shortlist for the Orwell award for political fiction.

The £3,000 prize, intended to reward novels that “illuminate major social and political themes”, is in its second year and was won in 2019 by Anna Burns’s Booker winner Milkman. This year, Evaristo’s polyphonic novel about the lives of different generations of black women, already joint winner of last year’s Booker, will compete with five other titles including Ellmann’s 1,000-page stream-of-consciousness. Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning The Nickel Boys, Edna O’Brien’s Girl. Attica Locke’s Heaven, My Home and John Lanchester’s The Wall are also in the running.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Print and digital readers like different books, library data suggests

Ebook lending has been included for the first time in UK libraries’ annual tally of loans, and indicates distinct preferences between media

Gail Honeyman’s “up lit” novel Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine was the most borrowed ebook from UK libraries last year, with new figures showing a marked difference in taste between those borrowing ebooks and those checking out print titles.

This is the first time data for the most borrowed ebooks has been released, with Honeyman’s story of a woman whose carefully timetabled life is shattered by an act of kindness, topping the chart. Honeyman said she was “absolutely delighted and very grateful” at the news. “Our fantastic public libraries are a precious resource, and provide a vitally important range of services to the community,” she said.

Neil Gaiman apologises to people of Skye for breaking lockdown rules

American Gods author says he needed space so travelled ‘masked and gloved’ from New Zealand to his home on the island

Neil Gaiman has apologised to “everyone on the island” of Skye after he was spoken to by local police for travelling more than 11,000 miles from New Zealand to his home there, in breach of Scotland’s lockdown rules.

Gaiman, the author of the Sandman comics, Coraline and American Gods, left New Zealand at the start of May, writing on his blog that he and his wife Amanda Palmer had “found ourselves in a rough place” and “needed to give each other some space, which had been in very short supply in lockdown in New Zealand”. He departed when the country moved into “level three” of its lockdown, and flew “masked and gloved” to London before driving to Skye.

Monday, May 18, 2020

Waterstones plans to put its books under a 72-hour quarantine

Boss says books handled by customers will be removed to allow time for virus to die

Waterstones is preparing to put books into quarantine after they have been handled by browsing shoppers as part of plans to reopen its stores when allowed.

The bookseller intends to ask shoppers to set aside any book they touch on trolleys which will be wheeled away into storage for at least 72 hours before being put back on shelves in an effort to protect customers from the spread of coronavirus, in a move first reported by consumer writer Harry Wallop.

Taika Waititi leads all-star charity Roald Dahl readings

Meryl Streep and Benedict Cumberbatch among stars narrating James and the Giant Peach to raise funds to help vulnerable countries tackle Covid-19 crisis

Chris and Liam Hemsworth, Ryan Reynolds, Meryl Streep and Benedict Cumberbatch are among stars taking part in a group reading of Roald Dahl’s beloved classic James and the Giant Peach from their homes to raise money for the fight against coronavirus.

Oscar-winning film-maker Taika Waititi is teaming up with the Roald Dahl Story Company to recreate Dahl’s book in 10 instalments. Waititi will narrate the story while dozens of actors join in, including Lupita Nyong’o, Mindy Kaling and Cate Blanchett. In the first episode, the Hemsworth brothers play Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, with Streep and Cumberbatch taking on the roles of the evil aunties in the second – probably the only time Streep and Chris Hemsworth will ever play the same character.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Ask a children's author: young adult fantasy writer Garth Nix wants to hear your questions – video

In a new interview series from Guardian Australia, we're letting readers take control! If you or your child is a fan of Garth Nix’s books, with a burning query for him, please film it and email the clip to australia.culture@theguardian.com by Friday 22 May - or type it into the comments here. We'll compile the best questions – and Nix’s responses to them – in a video out a fortnight later.

• See more in Guardian Australia’s Ask A Children’s Author series

'Solace and healing': Ireland turns to poetry to ease lockdown strain

Social media is awash with quotes, poets read verses over the phone and households make banners of their favourite lines

More than a thousand people have died and the long lockdown, which begins to ease from Monday, has kept others apart but Ireland has found at least one comfort in the time of coronavirus: poetry.

New poems are being commissioned and performed and old poems are being rediscovered in a nation long synonymous with the written word.

Burgess papers reveal alternatives to notorious Earthly Powers ‘catamite’ opening

As the novel turns 50, researchers discover manuscripts with different versions of the provocative first line

For four decades, children have sniggered at the first line of the Anthony Burgess novel Earthly Powers, regarded as the most deliberately provocative opening in 20th-century fiction: “It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me,” Burgess wrote.

With the use of the word “catamite”, the term for a passive boy recipient of homosexual intercourse, the sentence flew in the face of homophobic norms and also implied pederasty. But newly discovered papers reveal the polymath and former Observer writer had created different versions of this “arresting opening” for a book he hoped would establish him as a literary heavyweight.

He talked about writing a novel of Tolstoyan or Dickensian scope and carried the manuscript around from place to place.

Friday, May 15, 2020

Research finds reading books has surged in lockdown

Survey of 1,000 people reports time spent with books has almost doubled, with thrillers and crime the favoured genres

A new survey has revealed that people in the UK have almost doubled the amount of time they spend reading books since lockdown began, but instead of dystopian fiction readers are turning to the “comfort” of crime and thrillers.

Nielsen Book’s research found that 41% of people said they were reading more books since Boris Johnson imposed the measures on 23 March. According to the nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, surveyed from 29 April to 1 May, the nation has also increased the amount of time it spends reading books from around 3.5 hours per week, to six. Just 10% of adults said they were reading less.

The best recent science fiction and fantasy – review roundup

The Kingdom of Liars by Nick Martell; Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang; Dark Angels Rising by Ian Whates; Lady of Shadows by Breanna Teintze; and Dangerous Remedy by Kat Dunn

The Kingdom of Liars (Gollancz, £16.99) is Canadian author Nick Martell’s impressive and highly ambitious epic fantasy debut. While awaiting trial for regicide, con artist Michael Kingman tells the tense, convoluted story of how he found himself imprisoned and how, a decade before the novel opens, his father was executed for murdering the king’s son. The setting is the Hollow, a land where the monarchy is barely hanging on to power, rebellion is rife and civil war looms. Michael comes from a once-exalted line of royal advisers. He charts his own fall alongside his investigation into his father’s alleged crime, depicting a fractured society and a code of magic known as Fabrication – the misuse of which can result in devastating memory loss. Martell’s portrayal of his protagonist’s growth, from a cocksure chancer to a mature adult sobered by his discoveries, is just as impressive as the twisty plot. The Kingdom of Liars is the opening volume in a series.

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Thursday, May 14, 2020

'Has your bum ever come off?': Andy Griffiths answers children's questions – video

In a new series for Guardian Australia, we’re getting kids to do the hard work instead of us – by interviewing their favourite authors. Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton have the next in their Treehouse book series coming out later this year. In the lead-up, Griffiths agreed to subject himself to a fierce interrogation from some Walkley-worthy inquisitors – and revealed some top secret info about what’s in store. We’ll be announcing the next author next week, so stay tuned

• The 130-Storey Treehouse will be out via Pan Macmillan in October 2020

Bryan Washington's 'kickass' short stories win £30,000 Dylan Thomas prize

Debut collection Lot, focused on Houston’s marginalised communities, praised for opening up an ‘otherwise unknowable’ world

Bryan Washington, a 27-year-old writer from Houston, has won the £30,000 Swansea University International Dylan Thomas prize for his “kickass” debut short story collection, Lot.

The collection is a portrait of the author’s home town, one of the most diverse cities in the US. Half of the stories follow a young gay man, with a black mother and a Latino father, who wrestles with his own sexuality and the challenging attitudes of those around him. The rest roam among the city’s male sex workers, drug dealers and its lowest paid, charting the violence and uncertainty of lives in neighbourhoods caught between neglect and gentrification.

Dishoom asks cookbook pirates to donate to charity appeal

After a bootleg of its recipe book was sent to ‘everyone and their nice auntie’, restaurant chain appeals to readers to buy copies or donate to Hospitality Action

The UK restaurant chain Dishoom has appealed for readers to buy their eponymous cookbook or donate to charity, after a pirated version went viral and was sent to “everyone and their nice auntie”.

The chain published its first recipe book last September, with recipes for “Bombay comfort food” including a bacon naan roll, okra fries and black daal, as well as stories and photographs of the Indian city.

Powderfinger, Paul Kelly, Adam Liaw and more: the best live streams for Australia and beyond

The Brisbane band’s one-off reunion is just one of many big things happening on a small screen near you. Here’s what’s coming up

15 May: Join us for the first Guardian Australia book club event on Friday! Launching at 1pm, the Zoom stream will feature Phosphorescence author Julia Baird in conversation with Michael Williams. To register click here, or stay tuned for the video highlights.

The City We Became by NK Jemisin review – a fizzing New York fantasy

Hideous apparitions attack NYC, as Jemisin has ‘a little monstrous fun’ after the Broken Earth saga

NK Jemisin is now such a major figure in science fiction and fantasy, it’s remarkable to think that her first novel was published only 10 years ago. Her ascendency has been as rapid as it has been deserved. All three titles in her Broken Earth trilogy – 2015’s The Fifth Season, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate and 2017’s The Stone Sky – won the Hugo award for best novel, an unprecedented achievement. Today she is certainly the most important fantasy writer of her generation; all of which means that major excitement surrounds The City We Became, her first novel since Broken Earth.

The problem is that buzz can build unrealistic expectations and lead thereby to anticlimax. Broken Earth is a work of extraordinary scope and grandeur, written with apocalyptic energy and verve, a story that moves mountains. In interviews Jemisin has described her new book as “my chance to have a little monstrous fun after the weight of the Broken Earth saga”, which is perhaps by way of dialling down expectations. And there is certainly fun to be had in The City We Became, though I suspect that native New Yorkers will have more fun than out-of-towners.

In Jemisin’s New York, the villains are the cops and corporations, and heroism is the bailiwick of ordinary citizens

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Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Sally Rooney's Normal People tops UK book charts as readers fall for TV version

Costa award-winning love story of Connell and Marianne takes top slot from David Walliams’ bestselling children’s book Slime

Sally Rooney’s Normal People has flown to the top of the UK’s book charts more than two years after it was published, thanks to the release of the TV adaptation starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Connell and Marianne.

Rooney’s Costa award-winning story of two young people coming of age in Ireland knocked David Walliams’s bestselling children’s book Slime off the top spot this week, said Nielsen BookScan, marking the Irish author’s first overall No 1.

Serial-killer expert admits serial lies, including the murder of his wife

Stéphane Bourgoin, whose books about murderers have sold millions, says he invented much of his experience, including the loss of a nonexistent wife

An online investigation has exposed French author Stéphane Bourgoin, whose books about serial killers have sold millions of copies in France, as a serial liar.

Bourgoin is the author of more than 40 books and is widely viewed as a leading expert on murderers, having hosted a number of French television documentaries on the subject. He has claimed to have interviewed more than 70 serial killers, trained at the FBI’s base in Quantico, Virginia, and that his own wife was murdered in 1976, by a man who confessed to a dozen murders on his arrest two years later.

Bluey: The Beach named book of the year at Australian Book Industry awards

Title in hit series based on TV show becomes first children’s book to take the honour

Bluey, the Emmy-winning Australian children’s television series about a little blue heeler puppy and her family, has just added another award to its swag – in a far more traditional medium.

Bluey: The Beach, a board book based on the animated TV series and published by Penguin Random House Australia’s Puffin imprint, has become the first children’s book to be named book of the year at the Australian Book Industry awards.

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Haruki Murakami to host lockdown radio show in Japan

Novelist and well-known music enthusiast will present the Stay Home Special ‘to blow away some of the corona-related blues’

Much-acclaimed Japanes novelist Haruki Murakami will host a radio special next week to try to lift the nation’s spirits under the coronavirus lockdown.

Murakami, the author of books including Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and a perennial favourite to win a Nobel prize, will play some of his favourite songs and answer listener questions in a two-hour show to air nationwide on 22 May. Called Stay Home Special, the show is named for the Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike’s recent plea for residents to stop going outside.

British Library asks nation's children to write miniature books in lockdown

Axel Scheffler and Jacqueline Wilson are adding micro-works to scheme asking youngsters to follow the Brontës’ lead and write their own tiny tales

Two hundred years ago, the Brontë children stitched together brown paper sugar packets, strips of wallpaper and old writing paper to create postage stamp-sized books for their toy soldiers to read. Today the British Library is calling on the nation’s children to follow in their footsteps and write their own small books, which will form part of an online “National Library of Miniature Books for the toy world”.

Inspired by the library’s collection of “miniature gems”, which ranges from the 600 miniature volumes in Queen Mary’s dolls’ house to publisher John Marshall’s matchbox-sized Infant’s Library, the project is backed by authors and illustrators including Axel Scheffler and Jacqueline Wilson, each of whom has created their own book for the library.

A Journal of the Plague Year may be fictional, but it's not untrue

Daniel Defoe clearly relied on his imagination to write his history, but where he invented scenes it was in the spirit of a larger truth

Before we even began reading A Journal of the Plague Year together, it felt like an obvious choice as we try to find our way through this pandemic. That feeling only grew when we began, and I saw its many parallels to our current situation.

But it also seems strange that this particular book should have been preserved by history – not least because, as a historical account, it’s pretty dubious. Most now think of it as fiction, despite the frontispiece’s claim that the book was “by a CITIZEN who continued all the while in London”.

Village constable: Why you will not pretend to quarter us by Force, will you?

John: We have offer’d no Violence to you yet, why do you seem to oblige us to it?

Monday, May 11, 2020

Stanley Johnson lands book deal to republish virus thriller

The Virus, first published in 1982, will be reissued this summer after the PM’s father shrugged off accusations of cashing in on the coronavirus crisis

A long out-of-print novel about a deadly virus by Stanley Johnson, the father of UK prime minister Boris Johnson, is to be reissued this summer, two weeks after it emerged that he was trying to find it a new publisher during the coronavirus pandemic.

Having been pitched by his literary agent to UK publishers as “an urgent, exhilarating novel” by “a tireless self-promoter”, Johnson senior’s 1982 novel The Virus has been snapped up by Black Spring, an imprint of Eyewear Press, an independent publisher founded by poet Todd Swift. Originally titled The Marburg Virus, the novel follows an epidemiologist who must race against time to develop a vaccine when an unknown virus breaks out in New York. Based on a real event in Germany in the late 1960s, it also stars a US president desperate to come out on top.

Sacha Dhawan to star as a standup in Nikesh Shukla's lockdown drama

Yash Gill’s Power Half Hour, directed by Milli Bhatia, is among a new batch of Virtual Collaborators films released this week

With comedy clubs closed by the coronavirus lockdown, many standups have been experimenting with streaming their performances online. Here’s another: Yash Gill, who emerges in tux and bow tie, ready to deliver an upbeat, gag-packed set from his flat. But this time the laughter quickly curdles. Gill, played by Doctor Who’s Sacha Dhawan, is among the characters in the latest series of Virtual Collaborators dramas, made by actors, writers and directors who have teamed up in isolation.

Dhawan says that Yash Gill’s Power Half Hour, which will premiere at 8pm on YouTube on Monday, has allowed him “to take myself out of my comfort zone”. Focusing on a creative project provided an opportunity to find balance and clarity at a difficult time. “Being in lockdown has brought such an array of different emotions to the surface,” says the actor. “It’s taken its toll on my mental health, because I’m forced to ‘sit’ in feelings, which I’ve got so used to avoiding.”

Watch all of the Virtual Collaborators films.

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Not now, Bernard ... I'm on my iPhone: classic children's text reissued for digital era

Author David McKee reveals why, 40 years on, his cautionary tale of the perils of ignoring children is still relevant

For the past 40 years it has been a warning to parents about the monstrous consequences of ignoring their children. Now new illustrations of the classic picture book Not Now, Bernard have been created to better reflect the daily life of families in the age of smartphones and tablets.

Picture books are one type of book shared by adults and children. A few adults didn’t like it – it made them feel guilty

'I came face to face with Dennis Nilsen': poet laureate Simon Armitage

The former probation officer tells Desert Island Discs of the time he was in ‘a tiny room’ with the serial killer

The poet laureate Simon Armitage has spoken of his encounter with the notorious serial killer Dennis Nilsen and his unsatisfying time as a probation officer in a candid Desert Island Discs radio interview aired on Sunday.

The Yorkshireman was appointed as Britain’s 21st national poet a year ago.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Andy Serkis to read The Hobbit nonstop to raise money for the NHS

The actor, best known for playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, will read the entire JRR Tolkien novel to raise money for charities

Andy Serkis is to give a continuous, live reading of The Hobbit – lasting around 12 hours – in aid of charity. The actor, best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, will read the entire book from start to finish with no breaks.

Money raised from the performance will be split equally between NHS Charities Together and Best Beginnings.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Leading writers take up 'darkness residencies' for art project

Bernardine Evaristo, Max Porter and Raymond Antrobus rise to artist Sam Winston’s challenge in A Delicate Sight to submit to time in blackout

Some of the UK’s most acclaimed authors, from the Folio prize-winning poet Raymond Antrobus to the Booker-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo, have been searching for the light of inspiration in an unusual way: shutting themselves away for hours in complete darkness.

These “darkness residencies” are the brainchild of the artist and writer Sam Winston, part of his immersive project, A Delicate Sight. Winston asked Evaristo and Antrobus, as well as Don Paterson and Max Porter, to spend hours in blackout before writing something inspired by heightened senses, identity, imagination, sensory reduction and rest. The project launched online on Wednesday, with workshops, interviews and a film by the Bafta-winning documentary maker Anna Price. An exhibition at the National Writing Centre and the Barbican, as well as a book, are due to follow later this year.

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Normal People delivers best week ever for BBC Three

Millennials binge-watch Sally Rooney novel adaptation with 16.2m iPlayer requests

Normal People has delivered the best week ever for BBC Three as the youth drama proves a hit with millennials stuck at home during the lockdown.

The television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s award-winning novel has been requested 16.2m times on BBC iPlayer since the series launched on 26 April. A quarter of those who have logged on to watch it have already viewed all 12 episodes, as millennials turn to binge-watching television to relieve the boredom.

Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations

Covid-19’s impact on the arts world has led to countless films and concerts being scrapped or postponed and theatres and galleries closed. Here’s an updating list of what’s affected so far

Latest

• Glyndebourne opera festival cancelled.
• Latitude festival cancelled.
• Trnsmt, Scotland’s biggest music festival, cancelled.
• International Booker prize winner postponed from 19 May to sometime in the summer.
• All Taylor Swift dates for 2020 cancelled, to be rescheduled for 2021.
• Pet Shop Boys’ arena tour postponed until May 2021.
• Womad festival cancelled.
• Dartington Music Summer School & festival cancelled
• All of the five Edinburgh festivals (throughout August), including the Fringe, cancelled.

'Lulled and dumbfound': lockdown version of Under Milk Wood released

Key workers and youth theatre create strikingly apposite film of Dylan Thomas’s work about hushed Welsh village

Key workers including NHS staff, teachers and a vicar have joined stars of film, stage and television to produce a lockdown version of Dylan Thomas’s beloved play for voices, Under Milk Wood.

The cast, graduates of a youth theatre based in and around Thomas’s city of birth, Swansea, filmed themselves reciting a line or just a few words of the play’s first section, the haunting introduction to a sleeping Welsh fishing village.

Monday, May 4, 2020

Colson Whitehead and This American Life among Pulitzer 2020 winners

Author wins fiction prize for The Nickel Boys while the first ever prize for audio reporting goes to an episode of the hit podcast

Colson Whitehead, This American Life and writers from the New York Times are among this year’s Pulitzer prize winners.

During an online, at-home video, the Pulitzer administrator, Dana Canedy, referred to the “deeply trying times” in which these prizes are being announced but how journalism remains as important as ever and how the arts continue to “sustain, unite and inspire”.

Roger Robinson's poems of Trinidad and London win Ondaatje prize

A Portable Paradise is the second poetry collection to win £10,000 award for a book that conjures ‘the spirit of a place’

Interview: ‘I want these poems to help people to practise empathy’

Roger Robinson’s vision of Trinidad as a “portable paradise” of “white sands, green hills and fresh fish”, has won the British-Trinidadian poet the Royal Society of Literature’s £10,000 Ondaatje prize, which goes to a work that best evokes “the spirit of a place”.

Robinson’s collection, A Portable Paradise, which has already won him the TS Eliot prize, moves from the Grenfell Tower fire to the Windrush generation and the legacy of slavery. In its title poem, he writes how “if I speak of Paradise, / then I’m speaking of my grandmother / who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so / no one else would know but me”.

Ex-pope Benedict XVI accuses opponents of wanting to silence him

Comments in authorised biography also associate gay marriage with the Antichrist

Former pope Benedict XVI has accused opponents of wanting to silence him, while associating gay marriage with the Antichrist and attacking humanist ideologies in an authorised biography published in Germany.

The 93-year-old, whose original name is Joseph Ratzinger, said in Benedict XVI – A Life he had fallen victim to a “malignant distortion of reality” in reactions to his interventions in theological debates.

Stephenie Meyer announces new Twilight book Midnight Sun

Twelve years after cancelling it, the novelist is to publish a retelling of her smash hit YA novel from the vampire’s perspective

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has announced she will finally publish Midnight Sun, a retelling of her bestselling series from vampire Edward Cullen’s perspective, 12 years after she abandoned the manuscript following an online leak.

Meyer, one of the bestselling authors in the world, has been trailing an announcement on her website since last week, with a timer counting down to Monday’s announcement. The website immediately crashed when the countdown ended, as her army of fans attempted to find out what was going on, with some speculating that the Volturi, the army of evil vampires from the Twilight saga, were to blame.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Russian author defends gulag-era story as TV series provokes backlash

Literary star Guzel Yakhina shocked by emotional ‘cabin fever’ response to dramatisation

The Russian novelist Guzel Yakhina had learned to live with the persistent buzz of controversy surrounding her bestselling debut novel, Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes.

Her coming-of-age story of a young woman deported to Siberia during the Stalin-era purges of wealthier peasants, or kulaks, had been picked over for its portrayals of Soviet repressions and national identity in the largely Muslim region of Tatarstan ever since it was published in 2015.

It's an atmosphere of vital fear for one's life. It's life under self-isolation and all our feelings are more intense

Saturday, May 2, 2020

NK Jemisin: 'It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you're white'

The three-time Hugo award winner is one of the biggest names in modern scifi. She talks about overcoming racism to rewrite the future

In 2018, NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three consecutive Hugo best novel awards for science fiction and fantasy. Her first award had been in 2016, for her novel The Fifth Season, and its two sequels, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, won in the following years. Yet speaking on the phone from her home in coronavirus-hit Brooklyn, Jemisin says she never thought she’d be published. “I honestly didn’t think I had a chance. You just didn’t see characters like me in fiction,” she says.

Growing up in Mobile, Alabama and New York, Jemisin was an avid reader, making up her own stories from the age of eight, but the lack of black women writing science fiction and fantasy, the genre she loved, made her believe it wasn’t for her. “We were all exposed to nothing but white dude fiction, occasionally young white women fiction, and if that’s how you’ve grown up, then that is what is normal.”

We were all exposed to nothing but white dude fiction and if that’s how you’ve grown up, then that is what is normal

A Nasa-sponsored workshop for writers about astronomy and her fascination with volcanoes fed into The Fifth Season

When you read HP Lovecraft books like The Horror at Red Hook he’s blatant about the racism

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Friday, May 1, 2020

Publishers must act now to develop working-class writers, says report

Common People: Breaking the Glass Ceiling in UK Publishing uses experiences of 17 writers to lay out case for better representation

The books industry needs to “wake up to the world beyond the M25”, according to a new report into the under-representation of British working-class writers, which lays out a damning indictment of the “pervasive barriers” in their way today.

The report, Common People: Breaking the Glass Ceiling in UK Publishing, draws on evidence from the 17 working-class writers chosen for last year’s Common People anthology, along with industry experts. Published on Friday to mark International Workers’ Day, it says that the full range of voices in British society “is neither heard nor acknowledged in UK publishing” and that aspiring, working-class writers are at a disadvantage when trying to get a publishing deal. Barriers cited include a lack of support networks and contacts, lower levels of self-confidence and the publishing industry’s lack of social diversity.

Stanley Johnson pushes for new release of his 40-year-old virus novel

Prime minister’s father denies being opportunistic during coronavirus outbreak

It is easy to see why it could be thrilling fiction for our times: it has a mysterious and fatal virus, an epidemiologist hero, a desperate search for a vaccine and murky political skullduggery. It also features a green monkey.

But whether it is the moment for Stanley Johnson, the father of Boris Johnson, to be pushing his 40-year-old novel for a new release is another question.

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