Happy Halloween!

31st October 2013

Rebecca Stott’s Ghostwalk is one of the Independent’s top ten ghost stories:

“Intelligent and unnerving, this tale of the friend of an academic investigating her death focuses on the dead woman’s obsession with Sir Isaac Newton and his alchemic past. A feat of historical fiction.”

Follow this link for the full article.

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2013 Internet and Society Award

31st October 2013

Chris Lintott has been awarded the 2013 Internet and Society Award by the Oxford Internet Institute, in recognition of his exemplary effort to use the Internet for the public good.His book on crowdsourcing will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2015.

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Free Word ‘Weather Stations’ Writer in Residence

29th October 2013

A ground-breaking global project combining literature and climate change.

Xiaolu Guo, one of Granta’s best of young British novelists and author of A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers, has been shortlisted alongside Inua Elams, the Nigerian born poet, playwright and performer and North-East based writer artist Stevie Ronnie, as the Free Word Weather Stations Writer in Residence.

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2014 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award

29th October 2013

The Eccles Centre For American Studies announced that the 2014 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award has been given to Olivia Laing.

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Desert Island Disks

28th October 2013

Professor Tanya Byron, clinical psychologist, TV presenter and author of The Skeleton Cupboard (Macmillan 2014), was interviewed by Kirsty Young for Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ this weekend.

Tanya has spent the last twenty years in clinical practice, helping children, young people and families deal with some of the most difficult parts of life - depression, anxiety, aggression, self harming and drug addiction.

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Derek B Miller Wins CWA Dagger Award

25th October 2013

Derek B Miller has won the CWA 2013 John Creasey Dagger, for best new crime writer of the year, with Norwegian by Night. The judges, who were unanimous in their decision, praised “… this beautifully-written contribution to Nordic noir with a twist. It cleverly avoids many the genre’s clichés and pitfalls and emerges triumphant as a fully-dimensional gem.”

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The Girl Who Loved Camellias

8th October 2013

Yesterday, Julie Kavanagh spoke about her biography of Marie Duplessis, The Girl Who Loved Camellias, on ‘In Tune’ on Radio 3.

Julie Kavanagh brilliantly re-creates the short, intense, and passionate life of a girl who, at thirteen, fled her brute of a father and Normandy to go to Paris, where she would become one of the grand courtesans of the 1840s, inspiring Alexandre Dumas fils’s novel and play La dame aux camélias, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera ‘La Traviata’, George Cukor’s film ‘Camille’, and Frederick Ashton’s ballet ‘Marguerite and Armand’.

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Nirvana by Numbers

8th October 2013

‘Nirvana by Numbers’, a documentary aired on BBC Radio 4 yesterday, follows Alex Bellos around India to explore the fundamental numerical gifts which early Indian mathematicians gave to the world, and asks whether the great religions of ancient India - Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism - had any part in their origins. Alex’s first book Alex’s Adventures in Numberland was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize and the National Book Award’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Click here if you missed it.

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Sir John Eliot Gardiner on Radio 4

8th October 2013

Sir John Eliot Gardiner was interviewed yesterday on Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’, talking about Music in the Castle of Heaven, his definitive biography of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Click here to listen in.

Alternatively, book tickets to see him in discussion with Raymond Tallis at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Wednesday 9th October.

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Mind Games: The science of sexism

1st October 2013

The number of female politicians in Britain is decreasing, teenage girls are suffering increased violence from boyfriends, and the pay gap between men and women over the age of 30 shows no sign of equalising. Some claim that inequality and sexism are on the increase. But where does sexism come from? Claudia Hammond chairs an expert panel discussion, this Wednesday, at The Royal Institute, in association with the British Psychological Society.

Tickets: £12 standard, £8 concessions and £6 Associates.

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