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Evening Standard column

Sebastian Shakespeare

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From the pearls of Zadie to the D cups of Jordan

As 2010 draws nearer, the literary world is starting to ask: what were the defining novels of the Noughties?

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Rich pickings at Lime Wood

The Standard is the first paper to report on a stunning new hotel in the New Forest that's taken five years and £30 million to create. So has it been worth the wait?

Our writers are allowed to pick a pocket or two

You can lay many faults at the door of Sir Andrew Motion but plagiarism is not among them

It's a crime not to honour our thriller writers

Why does discrimination against crime writing still exist?

Literary snobs should leave Katie Price alone

First Lynda La Plante attacks novels written by celebrities. "Publishers, stop spending your millions on this tripe," she said at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards earlier this month, singling out Katie Price for special opprobrium

This post strike will force me to throw in the etiquette towel

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the postal strike (and I am sure there are rights and wrong on both sides), I've already given up on my post. I don't recall it ever being so inefficient in my lifetime.

Darling, I’m not name-dropping I’m networking

Never mind the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Nicky Haslam's forthcoming memoirs, Redeeming Features, has set a whole new benchmark for the small world phenomenon

The Connaught is where old and new worlds meet

The Connaught's new makeover has added to its elegant charm, says Sebastian Shakespeare

Take 'history' by artists with a big pinch of salt

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is a worthy winner of the Booker Prize but qualms have already been raised by some critics over the novel’s disservice to history

Sex, scandals and parties: 300 years of life on planet Tatler

Tatler may be an ageing grande dame at 300 years old but she is as relevant today as she has always been

Back in the moral maze of daring to bare

Here we go again. The very week a nude photograph of actress Brooke Shields aged 10 has been removed from a Tate Modern exhibition, on police advice, we have Anna Friel appearing naked on the West End stage

Please don’t tell me my hero has feet of clay

I am in mourning for one of my favourite Sixties pop songs, California Dreamin’, by The Mamas and the Papas

I'm guilty of not grilling my cleaner

It is up to our border controls to stop illegal immigrants coming here in the first place. That's what I pay taxes for

Kelly Brook's place in the limelight is taken by... me

If you are lucky enough to be invited to the GQ Men of the Year Awards - I was - then a word of advice. Make sure your arrival on the red carpet doesn't coincide with that of the beautiful people

London can still party with the best

London knows how to party even when the chips are down, and we Brits know how to shake our booty with the best of them

Gordon Brown and David Cameron should take a leaf out of Barack Obama’s book

Gordon Brown and David Cameron should publish their full summer reading lists and be damned. The reading public has a right to know

Why Radio 4 soars as TV hits rock bottom

Figures from Radio Joint Audience Research reveal that Radio 3 has broken the two million listener mark and that Radio 4 is reaching more than 10 million people a week

Andrew Roberts is the social historian

For all his partying with friends in high places, Andrew Roberts has an insatiable thirst for work. Here we pin down the bestseller about town

Where is the novelist to do our city justice?

Dickens’s novels seemed to encapsulate the entire city and London became the central character of his work

I know whose diary I really want to read

Sebastian Shakespeare wonders who will emerge as the pre-eminent diarist of the early 21st century, talks about festivals and celebrity violence

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