Getting into (someone else’s) character

Don’t write what you know; write what you love. Writing my first novel, Lady MacBethad, was like the bursting of a pipe. The words gushed out of me, and the story flew onto the page with a kind of fre

Over my decades-long writing life, I’ve been a reader, judge and (sometimes) an organiser for many novel-writing competitions, including the Harry Bowling Prize, the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s

How The Pickwick Papers revolutionized Victorian publishing

HE is, arguably, the most famous amateur sleuth ever created. Clad in an Inverness cape and deerstalker hat, and with calabash pipe in hand, his distinctive look is instantly recognisable to fans all

Take a good dollop of Victorian innovation, add a fistful of classics, season it liberally with creative genius and you’ll cook up the very British art of literary illustration. Carla Passino charts its history and discovers that it still thrives

Words can be all-powerful, as these three couples discovered. They reveal the romantic and unusual ways books brought them together…