“…Dodgy dentists. The Dalai Llama. High-altitude polo players. Maoist rebels. Yak herders. Imran Khan. Just a few of the diverse personalities professional funnyman turned adventure traveller Michael Palin met on his epic 125-day journey across the world’s greatest mountain range…”
Ian Rankin – A Question of Blood interview
“…Not many punk rockers will tell you it was a copper that made them what they are today, but bestselling British author Ian Rankin is an exception to this rule. He owes his livelihood to one Detective Inspector John Rebus, a hard-nosed Edinburgh cop….”
Tony Parsons – Stories We Could Tell interview
“…The life I lived at the end of the 70s was 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – you can only do that for so long… I was glad to get out before I was 25, and happy to get out alive…”
Chris Patten – Not Quite the Diplomat interview
“…People sometimes talk and write about foreign affairs as though it was the sort of subject that can only be understood by a secret society of diplomats and politicians. In fact they should be accessible to all of us…”
Christopher Brookmyre – All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye
“…
Unlike most people, Jane Flemming, the protagonist of Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre’s novel All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye, can pinpoint the exact turn of events that transformed her life. A drunken, awkward, and most importantly unprotected bout of unsatisfying sex with her Catholic boyfriend Tom… ”
Iain Banks – Interview
“…A disturbed teenager slaughtering rabbits and torturing wasps; A futuristic religious leader decapitating his nemesis, keeping the head alive as he uses it daily as a punch bag; A serial killer intent on murdering those who represent the excesses of Thatcher’s Britain.
Just a few examples of the dark, warped and, often perversely funny themes that run through the works of Iain Banks….”
Jeffrey Archer – Interview
“… To say that disgraced politician cum author, Lord Jeffrey Archer, is a controversial character is an understatement. He has been imprisoned for perjury and perverting the court of justice; breached parole conditions; stolen coats in Canada; been accused of insider trading and ripping off charities; and was implicated in Simon Mann’s planned coup in Equatorial Guinea. The list goes on….”
Athol Fugard – Tsotsi
“…Tsotsi, is a compelling and brutal tale that follows the life of the story’s eponymous protagonist. Set in Sophiatown, Fugard uses the oppression of the apartheid regime as a backdrop for the novel’s main setting: deep-rooted racism, the abject poverty of the black community, brooding violence…”
Shirley Hazzard – People in Glass Houses
“…If there’s one quality that defines Shirley Hazzard’s People in Glass Houses, it’s subtlety. This collection of eight short stories is a masterpiece of observation which clearly demonstrates the author’s perceptive wit… Set in the 1950s, amidst the corridors and offices of the newly-created monolithic and meandering bureaucracy of “the Organization” – an American-based concern intent on ‘inflicting improvement’ the world over…”
Tom Hodgkinson – How To Be Idle
“…Not only is How to be Idle thoroughly entertaining, it should resonate with anyone, except the most puritanical workaholic bores, who has ever questioned how our lives have become to be dominated by work, time, and the need to be constantly doing something, or feeling guilty for being inactive…”
