Kensal Rise library campaigners gain another day
Brent council backs off from emptying shelves, as protesters complain offer to run service with volunteers was ignoredShortly after midday on Wednesday, one of the local authority workers caught up in the often bitter hostilities between Brent council ...
Campaigners block council’s efforts to remove books from Kensal Rise library
Protesters gather outside 111-year-old library, which has been closed down by Brent councilAround 50 campaigners have gathered outside Kensal Rise library in north-west London after Brent council workers began removing books from the closed library, wh...
Ebenezer Scrooge named most popular Dickens character
Penguin Books poll to mark 200th anniversary of author's birth reveals miser from A Christmas Carol as best lovedA cold-hearted miser bullied by ghosts into gaining a conscience has triumphed over a festering, jilted bride and an alcoholic, nihilistic ...
Library campaigners mount vigils to prevent Brent council clearing shelves
Some locals refuse to accept loss of half borough's libraries despite high court ruling that council had right to close them"Bloody liberty," shouted the woman pushing her baby past the boarded-up perimeter of what was, until last week, Preston library...
Agatha Christie’s surfing secret revealed
Hercule Poirot creator and her first husband Archie may have been among the first Britons to learn how to surf standing upHercule Poirot never risked his little grey cells – nor his impeccably waxed moustache – by attempting to hang ten. Nor did J...
Harry Potter fans camp out for final film
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 premieres tonight and fans hope for a glimpse of JK Rowling or Daniel RadcliffeThere may have been pigeons and gulls rather than dragons and owls wheeling across the moody skies over Trafalgar Square earl...
Compare the memoir: insurance meerkat’s life story on sale
Aleksandr Orlov book 'to inspire the next generation of young businesskats' enters bestseller chart before releaseThe preternatural decadence of Keith Richards, the confessional wit of Stephen Fry and the sexual candour of Tony Blair may have met their...
One Day director Lone Scherfig wraps filming of David Nicholls’ novel
Director defends casting of Anne Hathaway as chippy northerner Emma opposite Jim Sturgess as Dexter in 90s LondonThere can, on paper at least, be few surer ways of alienating the fans of a much-loved and peculiarly English novel than adapting it for th...
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness published as a graphic novel
Artist Catherine Anyango tells how her richly-detailed drawings reflect the dense style of Joseph Conrad's savage colonial storyIn the 108 years since it was published, Joseph Conrad's colonial fable Heart of Darkness has infected TS Eliot, been excori...
Climate change and vuvuzela leave mark on Oxford Dictionary of English
Other words and phrases introduced for the latest edition include 'toxic debt', 'staycation', 'cheesebal' and 'national treasure'The World Cup in South Africa, climate change, the credit crunch and technology have all left their mark on the way we talk...
‘Tome raider’ jailed again for stealing valuable books
William Jacques sent to prison for three-and-a-half years for thefts worth £40,000 from Royal Horticultural Society libraryA serial book thief who used a Cambridge degree and a tweed jacket as a "shabby cloak of respectability" to mask his deeds was j...
Tom Stoppard in warning over decline of ‘printed page’ in education
Dramatist expresses fears that the 'moving image' and 'world of technology' are eclipsing the call of literatureThe playwright Sir Tom Stoppard spoke today of his fears that the "printed page" is in danger of being edged out in a "world of technology"....
