Not for the first time, a Martin Amis novel has divided the critics. Some think his latest novel, The Pregnant Widow, is worthy of the Booker Prize, others think it lurches between farce and portentousness... more
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... more
The devil, as ever, is in the detail. And the devil, I am coming to believe, was born between 1946 and 1964, fully returns the Rolling Stones' sympathy and probably owns a second home in Provence. For the devil is a baby boomer... more
It is always said that women have to worry about what they wear and men do not. Yet women are making decisions based on aesthetics whereas for men they touch a fundamental sense of identity... more
Whatever her other long-term achievements may turn out to be, Katie Price deserves respect for having so completely had it over the whole publishing world... more
Young south London writer whose every work has proved an award-winner joins veterans ASByatt, JM Coetzee and William Trevor on this year's Man Booker Prize longlist... more
Everything has changed and we face a new future. The whole culture of gratuitous consumerism no longer seems fulfilling and we can’t afford it anyway. So what do we do? Become helplessly nostalgic for the past... more
Yesterday I was tempted to phone my mum to ask her to hide the newspaper. A few times a month, my dad does emergency childcare for us. A new report suggests he should be paid for his services. And I don't want him getting any funny ideas.... more
The son of novelist Julie Myerson launched a scathing attack on his mother calling her "insane" for labelling him a drug addict in her new book... more
After the past 12 months of highs and lows in the capital, Nick Curtis sorts out the London personalities with plenty to smile about from those who have gone into freefall... more
The Man Booker judges have determined that Aravind Adiga's debut novel about the seamier side of Indian life is the best fiction of the year. How do they do that?... more
The experience of being an immigrant fuelled the writing of The White Tiger, the debut novel by Indian writer Aravind Adiga which has won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize... more
One of this year's Man Booker Prize judges has criticised male academics who sit on literary panels, claiming they pick "highbrow" novels over readable ones... more
Celebrity sells at an astonishing rate, yet at its heart the UK still loves a book for itself and London is a great champion of literature. These are the people who keep us reading.
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John le Carre has a new book out but it will win him no prizes: he disdains honours and forbids his novels from being put forward for the Booker Prize. And a good thing too, when so many fine novels have been overlooked for the award in its
40-year history... more
The latest epic from Salman Rushdie and the hotly tipped story of post-9/11 America by Joseph O'Neill have failed to make the Man Booker shortlist... more
When Tom Rob Smith's first novel made the longlist for our most prestigious literary prize it caused a publishing storm. Here he hits back at his critics
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Salman Rushdie, already winner of this year's Best of Booker Prize for Midnight's Children and shortlisted three times previously, is once again among those in line to win the literary award... more
Just before the Man Booker Prize was awarded last year, an enterprising journalist revealed that the entire shortlist of six had sold fewer copies than Crystal, the second novel issued under the name of Katie Price, the inflatable better known as Jordan. Her book had shifted 159,407 units in just three months, comfortably seeing off the Booker total of 120,770 (nearly all Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, anyway). Literary fiction is a goner, pundits glumly concluded... more
The Young Vic re-opens its doors tonight following a £12.5 million redevelopment. Jude Law's favourite artistic haunt in the capital, has been closed for two years. ... more
Afternoon:
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