Last night Matt and I braved the 6 o’clock crowds at Waterloo station and fought for a place outside Strada on the Riverside before seeking refuge in the Queen Elizabeth Hall for a night of Electronica With BBC Concert Orchestra. I should point out that orchestras are not normally our thing, but this particular orchestra held…
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Good news for those obsessed by misplaced apostrophes: you are not alone. BBC Breakfast was inundated by emails after they posed the question, ‘Does grammar matter?’ and the answer was a resounding, ‘Yes!’ The debate was reignited after the announcement that a major Building Society has hired an A Level English teacher to provide grammar…
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As someone who left school at the age of 16 and has not been held back by lack of a degree, I often make the point in book talks that writing is a hobby requiring only a PC and time. I have never even been to a creative writing class – up until now. Why, then,…
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Gareth Malone, my new favourite television presenter, is truly inspirational. His Extraordinary School for Boys is reality television at its best, one that I hope will have a lasting legacy – not only for the boys who particapated, but also for the future of the school curriculum.   It would have been easy to dismiss the boys’ complaints…
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Thanks to everyone who got up at the crack of dawn to support me as I took part in Authors for Peace earlier this week. I had to: you didn’t. Due to the single-minded efforts of Priya Basil, a new world record was created. 75 authors read consecutively from their work in honour of the UN’s International Day…
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I was lulled into a false sense of security when the testing for the video linkup for the Authors for Peace day went without a hitch. Today when I logged on successfully at 6.30am, my main fear was considerably more low-tech – how I was going to hold the telephone receiver and turn the pages of my book at…
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On September 21st 2010, the internationales literaturfestival berlin will host Authors for Peace, a 24-hour, global, live  and – hopefully – record-breaking online reading to mark the UN’s International Peace Day. Authors include Joanne Harris, Kamila Shamise, Eliot Weinberger, Shashi Tharoor, Tahmima Anam, Gail Jones, Nuruddin Farah and Jane Davis.  This event is the first of its kind. Authors from…
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It’s that time of year again. For all information regarding events at the Guildford Book Festival and how to reserve your tickets go to http://www.guildfordbookfestival.co.uk/

I was disinclined to believe it when my book club readers told me that children no longer read. In my friends’ homes, the Bedtime Story is the main event of the child’s evening. It may start out as part of the evening routine, the carrot to tempt the child up the stairs to bed, but it…
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It was with medical matters on my mind that I watched the film, The Bucket List, this week. The premise was that two men (Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson: the character’s names are instantly forgotten when you have those two in the starring roles), finding themselves with only six months to live, take a trip together, ticking…
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