Saturday poem: My Life
By Roy FullerSoon, no one will remember my eccentricity –A fair example, fitting "Oh Dearie me today"(The catchphrase of a childhood landlady)To the tune of "Lady Be Good".And who else will echo my grandfather's phraseOf assent when offered a second ...
Saturday poem: My Life
By Roy FullerSoon, no one will remember my eccentricity –A fair example, fitting "Oh Dearie me today"(The catchphrase of a childhood landlady)To the tune of "Lady Be Good".And who else will echo my grandfather's phraseOf assent when offered a second ...
Switched by Amanda Hocking – extract
Read an excerpt from the first volume of the Trylle saga, the self-publishing superstar's first outing with a traditional imprint
Angela Carter: portrait in postcards
The author was in her literary prime when she died 20 years ago aged 51; since then her brilliantly exuberant novels have influenced a generation of writers. Her friend and literary executor has written an insightful memoir inspired by postcards Carter...
The Saturday poem: The Offer
By Olivia McCannonThey made their highest offer on the houseThe survey showed it was built on quarriesBut they bought it anyway for the view.The years brought shifts too small to be seenSlipping right angles blurred by shadowFissures so fine they passe...
Tempest by Julie Cross
Julie Cross's debut teen novel is an action-packed time-travel romance. Sample the first chapter here
You Can’t Read This Book: why libel tourists love London
In an exclusive extract from You Can't Read This Book, the Observer columnist Nick Cohen presents a damning indictment of how the English legal system helps the wealthy and powerful suppress inconvenient truthsAt their best, journalists expose the crim...
The Saturday poem: He Stands So Still and Waits
By Vesna GoldsworthyI take my spectacles offBefore the ink lines of his limbsEmerge from the crowdBefore the smile closes his eyesBelow the clock at WaterlooHalf way betweenA Giacometti and a Meissen ChinamanHe stands so thin and waitsYet I am the frag...
Birthday plans
In an extract from his memoir written before he died last year, Gil Scott-Heron talks about when he toured with Stevie Wonder to establish Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday in the USMemphis, Tennessee was only 90 miles west of Jackson, my ch...
‘Stephen Lawrence’ by Carol Ann Duffy
Written by the poet laureate after the conviction of two men for the teenager's murder in 1993Cold pavement indeedthe night you died,murdered;but the airborne drop of bloodfrom your woundwas a seedyour mother sewedinto hard ground –your life's length...
