Whilst books might not provide a medical antidote to health problems, there are emerging schemes that might go some way to helping those faced with challenging health problems. A new scheme promoting book-based therapy for dementia sufferers will be launched in libraries in England in January 2015. The ‘Books on Prescription‘ scheme comes from The […]
An article in The Guardian caught my eye recently: Weird and Wonderful Bookshops from around the World and I was pleased to see that one of my favourites, Barter Books, had made the list. It’s a beautiful secondhand bookshop housed in a converted railway station in Alnwick. The list features lots more I’d like to visit […]
A lover of thumbing through pages of a riveting read, the feel of an embossed cover and the smell of a new book – I never converted to e-book reading. But, with it’s light-weight transportable convenience, many did and for a while it looked to be the end of printed books. However, last November, statistics […]
Q. My husband and I really enjoyed your book and would like to know how long it took you to research it? We investigated ourselves about the real life character, Wassmuss, who we found fascinating. Diedre, London. Hi Diedre, Many thanks for your kind words about, and interest in, Kingdom Lock. I’m delighted you and […]
The Turner Prize is rolling round again (for a tongue in cheek read on the subject, try Ruth Dudley Edwards’ Killing the Emperors) and putting art at the forefront of peoples’ minds. This weekend I saw a great exhibition by an artist who fully deserves their Turner Prize-winner title, Grayson Perry. ‘The Vanity of Small Differences’ […]
A silent Sherlock Holmes film made in 1916, thought to have been lost forever, and featuring the only screen performance by William Gillette with his trademark pipe has been found in the French film archive. Read the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29474334 Lydia Riddle, Editor
We’re now officially into autumn which means darker mornings and drizzly weather. But it’s not all doom and gloom: it’s not to hard to love this change of season when our parks and cities look like this – check out these beautiful autumn pictures: Do you have any great seasonal photos to share? Sophie. Editorial […]
Fans of our Sherlock Holmes pastiches will be delighted to hear that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original manuscript of the late Holmes story The Adventure of the Illustrious Client will be on display for the first time, at the Museum of London, from 17th October. Famous for never revealing the true identity of the ‘illustrious […]
Ever since we caught a glimpse of it’s proof-copy baby sister, we’ve been waiting with baited breath… And the time has come- just LOOK at this beautiful and stylish hardback, hot off the press! Murder at the Brightwell, by Ashley Weaver, is a witty new crime debut in which we meet Amery Ames (best name ever) […]
Apparently, I could read the entire Game of Thrones collection in 166 days. (Interestingly, it’s taken me over a year to watch 2.5 series). That’s reading for about 25 minutes a day, which is incidentally about the length of my tube journey. Find out your reading ‘potential’ using this Daily Mail test– just think how many wonderful […]
I’m proud to say I can still recite William Blake’s The Tiger on request, thanks to my GCSE English teacher who ruthlessly ordered me and my fellow classmates to stand up in front of the class and deliver it from memory. Over the next year, Cambridge University are conducting a poetry and memory survey, in which academics are going to […]
The time has finally arrived! Next week David Fincher’s adaptation of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn hits our cinemas. And I couldn’t be more excited. I remember last year the sea of black books with fluorescent typeface on the tube. Finally intrigued, I picked up a copy and didn’t put it down for a week. […]
With the upcoming paperback release of Judith Flanders’ hilarious caper crime, A Murder of Magpies (originally called Writers’ Block), we’re on the lookout for the best animal collectives. See the American edition cover, below. This weekend in the Guardian we spotted an article on ten of the best collective nouns. It missed out a ‘worship of writers’, which […]
Plans to create a museum within the house that poet William Blake lived in from 1800 – 1803 are being backed by a crowdfund campaign, launching next week. To celebrate, we are running a special offer on the hardback edition of Beryl Kingston’s Gates of Paradise, a charming love story, set against the historical events of Blake’s stay […]
We all have one or two books that we read and that stay with us forever – for me one of those titles is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The creature”s ability to be at once terrifying and vulnerable captured my imagination. I even wrote my dissertation on it. So I was extremely excited to learn that Kate […]
It was quite a challenge the Royal Over-Seas League Magazine put to our author, Suzette A Hill; to write a short story in just 50 words is no mean feat! But the author readily accepted the commission and it was challenge accomplished. We love the heartwarming photo, don’t you?! England – August 1940 Suzette A Hill That […]
There’ll be no dusty shelves chaotically crammed with books to aimlessly wander along for these students. Instead, Florida Polytechnic University’s spacious library is entirely digital and provides students access to around 135,000 ebooks. It will certainly mean lighter school bags! Lydia Riddle, Editor
Well this is something you don’t see everyday: As part of London Art Book Fair, artist Camille Leproust has created a book that turns black as it is read. The book is printed on thermal paper which heats and slowly blackens so the reader has around four hours to read it before the text fades completely […]
Some of my favourite bookshops have coffee shops on site (try the London Review Bookshop (pictured below) next time your in the capital). There’s nothing better than treating yourself to a browse through the shelves, before scouting out the comfiest seat in the cafe (usually a plush, velvet sofa scattered with a few biscuit crumbs from ghosts […]
As I woke up this morning to a very grey and dreary London, I am especially pleased to be going on holiday tomorrow to sunny Spain. For me one of the best things about preparing for holiday is choosing what books to take. But I made the silly mistake of buying them over a month […]
As a recent article in TED succinctly states: the serial comma (a.k.a. the Oxford comma) is perhaps the most hotly contested grammatical point of all time. Where do you stand on the issue of the Oxford comma? This picture should help you see why it makes sense to use it . . . Check out […]