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‘Time swims before me’
Eleven months ago I began working on a Get Into Reading project at a local care home for elderly people…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: The Otherness of Helen Mirren
Not unfamiliar to a regal presence, yesterday Cheltenham played host to one of Britain's most admired leading female actors, Dame…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: The Saga of the Broken Glass and the Missing Rucksack
My day at the festival started with a walk across Cheltenham's Imperial Square in the quiet sunshine of an autumnal…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: Shakespeare
Yesterday, my day at the festival was bridged by two events that could not have provided two more different insights…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: Reports from The Writers’ Room
So what's it like in the Writers' Room on the first Saturday of the festival? In a word, busy. I…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: What’s in a name?
My first evening at the festival started with a conversation with an older lady who had got up to let…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: Eric Hobsbawm
I have just heard Eric Hobsbawm, amongst the first of the speakers at this year's festival, talking at length about…
Cheltenham Literature Festival: The Inner Sanctum
In the first of her reports from the Cheltenham Literature Festival Jen Tomkins picks up her press pack and gets…
Cheltenham Literature Festival
The time has come for me to leave The Reader office, pack my bags and head to Cheltenham for this…
Author Readings and Workshops Near Liverpool
Manchester-based publisher Comma Press is promoting a new book of short stories entitled Elsewhere: Stories From Small Town Europe and…
James Ellroy on Dashiell Hammett
On Saturday The Guardian newspaper printed a superb piece by James Ellroy on crime writer and sometime Pinkerton detective Dashiell…
Reading and Readers Through the Ages
In celebrity and not-so-celebrity interviews in Sunday newspapers one of the most common questions is a variation on "what books…
