Welcome to the inaugural post of Bookbenchers where we ask backbench MPs what they read when they’re not white paper-pushing. Kicking things off is Steve Baker, former engineer officer in the RAF and currently MP for Wycombe – when he isn’t helping run the educational charity The Cobden Centre, or skydiving. What book’s on your bedside table
What do John Boyne, Tracy Chevalier, Joe Dunthorne, Anne Enright, Jane Harris and Kazuo Ishiguro have in common? Apart from the obvious? And apart from only coming in the first third of the alphabet? Graduates of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing course seem to be the only people writing novels at the moment.
The most influential authors, retailers, critics, agents, publishers, broadcasters and poets were all listed in The Guardian Book 100 this weekend. First prize went to the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos who – in addition to diversifying from books to groceries – is currently setting up Blue Origin, a company which offers space travel to the general
6,000 names on the petition and five tweets a week: the Society of Authors has launched its attack on Radio 4. BBC Controller Gwyneth Williams’ decision in June to reduce the BBC short story slots from three to one drove a cohort of objectors, including Ali Smith, Joanne Harris, Neil Gaiman and the SoA, to
Peter Bone MP: send them off!
Edna O’Brien (pictured here on the right with Margaret Drabble in 1972), the grand dame of Irish literature, has just won the The Frank O’Connor prize for her latest collection of short stories Saints and Sinners. Established in 2005, the €35,000 prize is run by the Munster Literature Centre as part of the Cork International Short
One of the literary excitements of this week, The Fear Index by Robert Harris, showed that the journalist and novelist continues to mine both the ancient and modern world for inspiration. His latest thriller revolves around a mad scientist who’s created a beast he can’t control. So far, so Shelley, but this monster is unmistakably
The Booker Prize longlist is perennially accused of pandering to the masses and to publishing publicity departments in particular. Heaven forbid the award might encourage reading or even book-buying. This year highbrow eyebrows shot up even further at the inclusion of titles so obscure they made current front-runner DJ Taylor, put forward for Derby Day,
The US president’s summer reading list has recently been at the centre of a media furore. The White House released a statement that Barack Obama had bought two books at Martha’s Vineyard bookstore to add to the three he had brought with him from Washington. Other sources say that Obama actually bought five books at Bunch
‘They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon‘ The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear, 1871 To hazard a guess at the exact nature of a runcible spoon, you’d have to consult Edward Lear’s 1849 illustration of the Dolomphious duck (pictured) on the point of devouring its
Reviewers this week flexed their intellectual muscles as they got to grips with clever clogs Edward St Aubyn’s latest novel. His roman-a-clef At Last was a double boon: the perfect opportunity not only to indulge in a spot of sordid literary gossip but also to parade their mastery of the Literae Humaniores. And in numbers