Pages & Proofs

The Irish writer and poet Seamus Heaney has died after a short illness. He was 74 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Heaney was born in 1939  in County Derry, Northern Ireland, and studied at Queen’s University in Belfast, before training as a teacher. He settled in Dublin but also worked in […]

Last night I learned that the French philosopher and writer Albert Camus was not only terrified of motor vehicles (that’s called motorphobia) but died in a car crash on 4 January 1960 at 46 years old. He was travelling from Provence to Paris and the accident occurred in the small town of Villeblevin. He was […]

Here’s the trailer for the movie of The Book Thief, the adaptation of Markus Zusak’s outstanding 2007 novel. Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson and Sophie Nélisse will star. The film is released in November for the US and the end of January in the UK. I have one comment about the trailer – where’s Death?

Every now and again, something remarkable happens in the used book business. Georgie Boddington from Western Australia made an online purchase of a book (pictured above) through AbeBooks called the Songs of Two Savoyards, a collection of Gilbert and Sullivan songs, and had a remarkable surprise when closely inspecting the book. “In 2011, I ordered […]

American crime writer Elmore Leonard has died at 87. The author wrote 45 novels including Fifty Two Pick Up, Get Shorty and Maximum Bob. He had suffered a stroke earlier this month. Born in New Orleans in 1925, he began his writing career with westerns before switching to crime in the 1960s. Hombre, 3.10 to […]

How about this for a piece of Bloomsbury Group memorabilia? A ceramic tile given to Virginia Woolf by her artist sister Vanessa Bell for Christmas in 1926. Priced at close to £100,000, it must be one of the most expensive tiles in history although this Andy Warhol tile is not cheap either. Sketches in Pen […]

A new biography of Wilkie Collins is painting an intriguing portrait of The Moonstone author. Wilkie Collins: A Life Of Sensation by Andrew Lycett reveals that “Collins, as they say, could have fornicated for England,” according to the Daily Telegraph’s review. On one of the family trips to Italy, he lost his virginity, aged 13, […]

Over at The Guardian, children’s author Katherine Rundell has selected her top 10 favourite descriptions of food in fiction. I like her selections. My youngest daughter is reading Little House in the Big Woods right now. 1. Everything Roald Dahl wrote I have eaten a lot of chocolate in my life, but nothing has ever been […]

If you are a nudist, or a naturist in some circles, then you will know Health and Efficiency Magazine, which is now called H&E naturist magazine. This is no ordinary niche journal serving a very particular group of people – Health and Efficiency began publishing in 1900, so it has a long history. It has […]

No Picnic on Mount Kenya – it’s one of the great travel tales of the 20th century but it seems more like an adventure story. In 1938 Felice Benuzzi graduated from law school in Rome and joined Italy’s Colonial Service, who posted him to Ethiopia as part of Italy’s occupying force. World War II kicked off […]