Monthly archive - June 2020

Back in the mid-1990s I spent four years covering criminal courts for Florida's largest newspaper. It was like being handed free tickets to the greatest shows on Broadway-well, not the musicals, but there was plenty of both tragedy and comedy.  Read more

The Women's Prize Trust is launching Discoveries, a writers' development programme offering aspiring female writers of all ages and backgrounds "encouragement and support" at the beginning of their creative journeys.  Read more

Like every other business, the publishing industry suffered a major blow during lockdown.

Even as the demand for reading books in print, digital and audio, from War and Peace to Sally Rooney, surged, so bookshops had to shut.

Supplies were halted and publication dates have been shifted, while festivals, launches and book fairs have been largely either cancelled or moved online.  Read more

After Hamlet has had his first meeting with what he's pretty convinced is the ghost of his recently departed father, he's none too enthused about the task that his understandably miffed old man sets him to. "The time is out of joint," Hamlet wails, before having a bit of a grumble about what rotten luck it is that it seems to be up to him to set things right.