Friday March 10, 2023 at 4:40pm
Official figures show £9,982 was spent per 1,000 people on libraries by central and local government in England, Scotland and Wales last year, down from £11,970 the year beforeView More
Friday March 3, 2023 at 12:20pm
Things we love about books: The smell on opening The rustle as you turn a page Being swept away to far off worlds Seeing into another’s soul The feeling you've made a new friend Losing all sense of time The fire it ignites within you Repeating it all over again...
Friday February 24, 2023 at 6:49pm
"The call for entries for the 2023 round of the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize is now open. Since 1988, the Royal Society has championed outstanding popular science writing and authors. Each year, our panel of expert judges choose the book that they believe makes popular science writing compelling and accessible to the public. The winning author receives a prize of £25,000 and will join notable names including Bill Bryson, Stephen Hawking, Camilla Pang,....
Tuesday February 7, 2023 at 1:25pm
Flashman's WinterBy Robert BrightwellThis book fills in two gaps in Flashman’s career, hitherto uncovered by his memoirs. The bulk of this volume is taken up with Flashman’s adventures in what was then Prussia, but which now comprises Poland, Russia and the Baltic states. In 1806 Prussia declared war on France and in a disastrous campaign lost most of its territory. Russia was forced to come to its aid and Britain too sent observers to assess how to help. Flashman joins this mis....
Wednesday February 1, 2023 at 1:18pm
From Ukrainian history to Putin’s kleptocracy and Gogol’s stories, author and former Russia correspondent Oliver Bullough chooses the best titlesWith Russian forces pushing deep into Ukraine, bombarding Kharkiv, Kyiv and other cities, and an unprecedented wave of western sanctions pushing the rouble down to an all-time low, it is hard for any of us to tear our eyes away from the news. But the currents of history that led up to this crisis are deep and complex, and understood in profo....
Thursday January 26, 2023 at 7:33pm
At the first performance by the Welsh National Opera in Bristol in 1968, Eric conducted ‘Rigoletto’. Ken Loveland (The Times) wrote “Eric Wetherell’s conducting, tense, tightly controlled, and completely informed about all the dramatic stresses which make this Italian opera’s first really great score, was a foundation on which a convincing stage performance could grow…” Modern Movies like Tár may win Cate Blanchett an Academy Award for her fictio....
Saturday December 24, 2022 at 12:15pm
We hope everyone has a happy, enjoyable Christmas and a peaceful New Year. Many thanks to all our authors for their great books and we look forward to 2023 and all your further creativity.
Wednesday December 14, 2022 at 12:06pm
Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry,” Sylvia Plath wrote in her diary, half longing for and half fearing the return of Ted Hughes in 1956. Both poets used each other as material and fuel for incandescent, mythological writing. To write about their marriage is therefore dangerous – you’re competing with two of the greatest 20th-century poets. But it’s seductive nonetheless, and perhaps especially for novelists, because it’s such a novelistic story: tw....
Friday December 9, 2022 at 5:22pm
The Doors To YesterdayBy Paul Varnden RobertsTucked away in his reclamation yard, inside a barn that's as old as history itself, William Luscombe has a doorframe that allows any door placed in it to open into the time that it was first made. He's kept this a secret for most of his long life, but now he wants to share it with his granddaughter, Pip. Set in South Devon, across five centuries, the story is a bitter-sweet tale of friendship, unexpected danger, humour and great sadness.View to o....
Friday December 2, 2022 at 10:14pm
For Sherlock Holmes Fans - including thos who ever imagined other stories or mysteries from his adventures - the author's books enter the public domain in January 2023!While most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories are in the public domain, ten of his stories were published in the 1920s, and while some of those stories have been entering the public domain since 2016, others remain under copyright until January 1st, 2023.