Writers' careers

Everything from poetry, short stories, essays and more esoteric forms of writing can now find a home in what has become a welcome and flourishing scene

In 1938 my father, aged 14, was packed onto a crowded train in his hometown of Vienna and sent to England, without his family, on the Kindertransport. The train travelled through the night, passing through Holland, where kind Dutch women waited on the train platform to give the children cakes and hot drinks, until it eventually arrived in Kent.  Read more

When The Tipping Point was published in 2000, it marked a sea change in the world of books. Selling over a million copies, Malcolm Gladwell's "biography of an idea" convinced publishers that, told well, readers could and would read serious books about economics and social change and history and science and business. A new genre of silo-busting, multi-disciplinary non-fiction was born.  Read more

I was talking, as one does, to the Reader on the Clapham Omnibus. I told him I was about to have a new book out after a 10-year gap. He was pleased to hear it, and he asked: "So, what made you decide to start writing again?"

"I didn't."

He looked a little confused.

I told him: "I never stopped."

His brow cleared. "Ah, it's one of these thousand-page doorstoppers?"  Read more

The toasty scent of hot scones, blackcurrant jam bubbling in the pot, my bare feet on the cold stone kitchen floor, my grandmother bustling about in her floral apron: These were the hallmarks of my childhood. On the table were ingredients from the past: lard, Spam, liver, and a box of dried egg powder.  Read more