‘The buck stops here’
Novelist Gwendoline Riley talks about her obsessive need to write, and why she'll never have childrenGwendoline Riley readily admits that her need to write borders on the obsessive. "Definitely," she says, eyes lowered as though revealing some intimate...
The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer's meditation on the great influences of his life is a book that deserves to be lovedThe last acknowledgement at the end of Pico Iyer's 10th book is to the man within his head, "to the author who, almost in spite of himself, taught me and so m...
Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes – review
Drawing on a cache of smuggled love letters, Orlando Figes movingly charts a romance that blossomed in the unlikliest circumstances"Death solves all problems," declared Joseph Stalin, adding with his customary brutality: "No man, no problem." Anyone fo...
Bafta TV special/Abi Morgan: A golden year for television
As the countdown to next week's British Academy Television Awards begins, Abi Morgan, screenwriter of The Hour, Shame and The Iron Lady, reveals why it's been a golden year for televisionMabel is unimpressed. "What are you doing?" "Writing a piece abou...
Bafta TV special: Jo Brand, Charlie Higson and Rebecca Front
Stars of the small screen reveal their TV secretsThe stand up: Jo BrandJo Brand bats away the suggestion that she's a national treasure. "To me that's someone who has a global reach, like Helen Mirren, or someone who's extremely good, like Stephen Fry....
Jay McInerney: ‘I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices’
He might have quit drugs but the celebrated American author hasn't given up on hedonism – breakfast is always improved with a bottle of the world's best wineLunch with Jay McInerney, it has to be said, is a more than usually enticing prospect. Althou...
Outcast of the Islands – Classic DVD
(Carol Reed, 1951, Studio Canal, PG) Carol Reed was acclaimed as an important new talent when Graham Greene, as film critic of the Spectator, reviewed his second film as a director, Midshipman Easy, in 1935. After the second world war they found fame, ...
Why I want all our children to read the King James Bible
The good book should be read as a great work of literature – but it is not a guide to morality, as the education secretary Michael Gove would have us believeFor some reason the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) was not approached...
Richard Dawkins the arch-atheist backs Michael Gove’s free Bible plan
Author of The God Delusion says providing free Bibles to state schools is justified by its impact on the English languageIt sounds like one of the most unlikely alliances of recent years. Richard Dawkins, arch-atheist and scourge of the praying classes...
The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst's elegant and erudite novel about the life and legacy of a gay war poet shows how truth is compromised by the erasures of remembrance and historyIt is seven years since Alan Hollinghurst won the 2004 Booker prize for The Line of Beaut...
Waterstones boss poised to join e-reader battle