Despite the relief felt at Joe Biden’s inauguration, optimism was light on the ground in the UK in January 2021. A surge in infections in December had cancelled Christmas for many - our own plans to hire a cottage in the Peak District for a few days away from London had been scuppered by a ‘Stay at Home’ order issued under the confusing new ‘tier’ system. Whatever tier we were in, it wasn’t a good one. A new covid variant was on the march, reducing the efficacy of vaccines an

In the weeks and months after my role at an advertising agency had been made redundant back in 2016 I made it a point of principle not to fall into the trap of browsing Netflix (or Amazon Prime) from the moment Manon left the house for work until it was time to collect Coco from school. Of course I did watch things on Netflix and Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer and YouTube, but not all day long. And I definitely didn't talk about what I was watching, keeping quiet when Whatsapp

Twenty-five years ago I was assistant to a senior publisher at Penguin Books who was responsible, as part of his portfolio, for the Time...

Late last year I started thinking about things that once were useful and are no longer so. Skin, discarded by a snake This chain of...

Listening to sounds made of books in the London Library Forms of Paper (2024 remaster) I am sitting in the main reading room of the...

For the last few months I've been working on a book idea that has been rattling around in my head for a couple of years or so...