The Spy Ring: Not The work Of An Ordinary Boy by Victoria L. Humphreys
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Pigeons have long been regarded as pests, culled from Trafalgar Square at least once I believe, and regularly shooed from my garden when I have put out bread to attract an array of garden birds (I particularly like robins, blue tits, blackbirds, and am delighted when I see the occasional redwing or goldfinch) only to watch the pigeons try to hoover it all up before anyone else gets a chance.
Poem Of The Week: Nurse at a Bus Stop By Simon Armitage
Nurse at a Bus Stop The slow traffic takes a good long look. Jilted bride of public transport, alone in the shelter, the fireproof bin and shatter-proof glass scrawled with the cave-art of cocks and hearts. It’s late, Friday, the graveyard shift, you’re ready to dab blood from a split lip, to hold the hand of cancer till the line goes flat.
‘The Words I Speak Are Too Big For My Mouth’*: Karin Boye’s Kallocain
When I think I’ve read everything dystopian, particularly from the genre’s early 20th century heyday, another gem appears on my radar. Karin Boye’s Kallocain joins the ranks of Brave New World and 1984 in its depiction of an authoritarian superstate.
Review: Leeds Playhouse - A Tale Of Two Theatres By Dave Stannard
There is something admirable about the struggle to create an enduring monument to the theatrical Arts in any regional city.
Push-Me, Pull You: Finding Home In Hartnell By Suzanne Snow
My reading tastes are eclectic and sometimes, I feel the need to have a rest from some of the heavier, emotionally draining stuff I incline to, so made time for this easy-to-read romantic novel which provides pretty much what you would expect.
Nation Of Interrupted Readers: Nearly Half Of UK Adults Say Distraction Stops Them Reading
The Reading Agency’s ‘State of the Nation in Adult Reading 2025’ report reveals a growing reading crisis, especially among younger adults, who report distraction as one of the most common barriers to reading for pleasure in the UK.
City Of Culture Turns Page For World Book Night
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The Reading Agency is inviting the people of Bradford to join a mass ‘read-in’ to mark World Book Night on Wednesday April 23, with one thousand Quick Read books handed out to the public for free.
Rocket Science, Secrets And Reconciliation: A Daughter’s Cold War Odyssey
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When I picked up The Gorodomlya Island Project, I expected to learn something about Soviet rocket technology. What I found instead was a gripping Cold War narrative that blends historical revelation with personal redemption.
Hiding From Memory: Darlings Of The Asylum By Noel O’Reilly
The Prologue of this gothic-flavoured novel sets a tone: women in a lunatic asylum are marching rhythmically down the stairs when a bird, trapped, tries to escape. It’s a clear metaphor for our protagonist’s situation.
Poem Of The Week: Thatcher By Sarah Wimbush
Thatcher Her Majesty of backcomb and pearls. Blonde bombshell, iron-handbagged and twice the man. No milk monitor here; eyes sapphire and Caligula, hoarder of bituminous and DSS payments. Who is the mob? Who are the enemy within?
Make Your Peace: Death At The Sign Of The Rook By Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson is living proof that persistence pays off. It took several years before she was recognised by the literary world but she persevered and the prizes which have followed are evidence of her authorial prowess. With several of her books adapted for television, she has proved herself also to be a worthy screen writer. Other than those featuring P.I.
Poem Of The Week: The Lock-Keeper's Daughter By David Wheatley
The Lock-Keeper’s Daughter Take me away from this terrible place, very slowly, by barge, rising through the frothy lock outside my window like an old cinema organ. Ours will have been the most tacit of courtships, the most offhand of consummations as I step aboard from the vegetable patch.
New Anthology Published As Legacy For Crimefest
To mark the end of Britain’s long-standing crime fiction convention, CrimeFest, organisers have compiled a new anthology, with proceeds of its sale going the Royal National Institute of Blind (RNIB) library. The anthology CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene is published by No Exit Press and features authors who have had a close relationship with CrimeFest over the years.
The Grand Euthanasia Hotel: Shaking Hands With Elvis By Paul Carroll
The arrival of Paul Carroll’s fine new novel couldn’t have been timed more judiciously: the first reading of the Assisted Dying Bill in Parliament has foregrounded a debate whose ethical complexity has simmered in the public imagination for many decades. The conjunction may be accidental but Carroll’s theme remains astonishingly serendipitous.
Whitby Lit Fest Partners With Yorkshire’s Ethical Agency Cause UK
The ethical agency Cause UK, which has a reputation for supporting the arts sector, has announced a new partnership to help produce and promote a new literary festival in Yorkshire. The inaugural Whitby Lit Fest is hosted 6 to 9 November 2025 in venues across the seaside town.
John Suchet's Intimate Portrait Of Beethoven Weaves Personal Experience With Historical Revelation
There comes a point in the life of any biographer when the subject becomes more than a historical figure—they become a companion, a confidant, perhaps even a friend. For John Suchet, former ITN journalist and now Beethoven's most devoted chronicler, that relationship has spanned decades and yielded seven previous books.
Poem Of The Week: To Be Mindful (Type A+) By Emily Cotterill
To Be Mindful (Type A+) Consider the unthreatening men of blood donation, bobbing ‘round community centres and sports halls on any given Tuesday. They dish out Club orange biscuits and cheap squash in flimsy plastic cups, getting on with institutional good. Notice machines that beep, beep, pleasingly, cradles that rock with dark bags of warm generous plasma.
Poem Of The Week: Hive Mother's Prayer By Rachel Bower
Hive Mother’s Prayer May the nights bring you pollen and sun-bright sheets, may the hours we rocked you still lull you to sleep, may they offer relief, may all your nights open with bee-bread and honey, release you from grief may they hold tired feet, may your head remember the warmth of my cheek, may your nights close in a glimmer of wings, may your belly keep its heat. {1…
Exiled On Earth: Govanhill Mythology By Shane Johnstone
Catastrophically ill-equipped though this reviewer is for taking a thorough critical view of a book that is rendered in Gaelic, Glaswegian Scots, French and English, the themes of Govanhill Mythology are so timely and so redolent of the wider zeitgeist that it would seem a dereliction to disengage.
Poem Of The Week: On Mute By Imtiaz Dharker
On mute There is a video recording of the incident. Here is a woman on the station platform. She is lying down. Her face is covered. Her face is covered with a rag or it could be clothing. She is lying still. There are people standing around her some with phones. No one is touching her. There is a child holding a corner of her clothing. The child is crying. The tears look real.
Poem Of The Week: 'Illuminations II' By Tony Harrison
Illuminations II We built and bombed Boche stalags on the sands, or hunted for beached starfish on the rocks and some days ended up all holding hands gripping the pier machine that gave you shocks. The current would connect. We’d feel the buzz ravel our loosening ties to one tense grip, the family circle, one continuous US!
The 2025 Writers' Award Is Open For Entries!
The 2025 Writers' Award competition is officially open for entries! The Creative Future Writers' Award is the only free to enter national competition for all underrepresented writers: those who face barriers due to mental health challenges, physical or learning disability, neurodiversity, survivors, and those from LGBTQIA+, working class and/or Black, Asian and global majority backgrounds.
Poem Of The Week: October Dawn By Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
October Dawn October is marigold, and yet A glass half full of wine left out To the dark heaven all night, by dawn Has dreamed a premonition Of ice across its eye as if The ice-age had begun its heave. The lawn overtrodden and strewn From the night before, and the whistling green Shrubbery are doomed. Ice Has got its spearhead into place.
Poem Of The Week: Waiting For Spring By Robin Hargreaves
Waiting for Spring No song rides on the chill breeze this morning and the oak and hazel keep their buds tight, tucked up their sleeves like tiny hands. I’m counting the impatient days with only the nodding snowdrop to show for winter’s end. It can’t be long until the bracken uncurls to breathe the wild garlic and the bluebells play their blue notes under the wind-borne curlew’s call.
Children's Book Review: Sky Surfing: Adventures In A Poetry Balloon
Nothing is better calculated to contradict a critical adult view of a children’s poetry anthology than the small person at whom the book is aimed.
Poem Of The Week: Winter Morning By Richard Meier
Winter Morning Shyly coated in greys, blacks, browns - to keep us out of sight of the cold - we weren't expecting this this morning: sun and shadows, like a summer's evening, like summer teasing.
Christmas Poem Of The Week: Unto Us A Child is Born By Beth Brooke
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Unto Us A Child Is Born Triptych egg tempura on oak panels Traditional as a devotional aid, this triptych of the birth of Christ is re-presented in the modern idiom: pregnancy test in Mary's hand, Joseph in running kit, this is a low key Annunciation. In the central panel the Holy Infant, delivered by Caeserean section, is handed to his mother by an angel in scrubs.
Poem Of The Week: Vera, Waiting By Shash Trevett
Vera, Waiting She had prepared for a telegram prepared for what she would say to the Post Office boy. Prepared her retreat to her room, to slit open the envelope and allow the news to make a sortie into her mind. An assault anticipated. Yet when the news came, it was by telephone. And she was in Brighton, not Buxton – her dug-out two hundred miles away – her parapet bare of barbed wire.
England’s Dreaming: House Anthems By Ralph Dartford
The British class system that Tony Harrison spent many productive hours ‘banging his head against’, sustains, if not in the rigid hierarchical structures that had begun to creak by the time Richard Hoggart’s seminal post-war study, The Uses of Literacy, appeared, then in food banks, overflowing gaols, and masochistic political alignments.
Forareian: Avenue Cars By Chris Speck
‘Forareian’. Anyone recognise it? It’s the only way I can think of to spell it – as it is spoken - since I’ve never seen it written down. My mother-in-law was a southerner and one of the first people to let me know I had a northern accent (despite my being subjected to elocution lessons as a child).