Return to childhood haunts

8:40am Thursday 2nd July 2009

Nicholas Shakespeare, former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph, acclaimed novelist and biographer, meets me in the St. Giles Café, a tiny, 1960s-era time capsule. The small, bustling place is lorded over by a lady owner who, following an hour’s wide-ranging conversation, barks at us: “You’ve been here for over an hour now. I have a business to run and I don’t want to turn away customers.”

Nightmare led to bestselling book

3:37pm Wednesday 1st July 2009

In the early summer of 2005, crime writer Simon Kernick was reaching the final stages of his fifth novel, a hefty, heavily researched thriller that “touched on the area of terrorism”. Then, on the morning of July 7, four young men joined the throngs of London commuters on their way to work carrying rucksacks stuffed full with explosives.

History of Oxfordshire pubs

2:19pm Thursday 18th June 2009

Paul Medley begins his latest book, Pubs of Oxford & Oxfordshire, by acknowledging that it is thanks to the efforts of Camra (Campaign for Real Ale), that a remarkable number of really good quality ales are now being brewed in Oxfordshire.

Living in a castle

8:50am Thursday 11th June 2009

In his new book The Music Room William Fiennes did not formally identify the family home as Broughton Castle, near Banbury. “I wanted people reading the book to imagine the castle for themselves without necessarily knowing where it was.