Cover Stories: Macmillan Group; Carol Thatcher's memoir; Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes

No doubt bowing to the exigencies of this week's Frankfurt Book Fair, the Holtzbrinck family (owners of Macmillan) moved fast to replace former CEO Richard Charkin, who made his debut on the Bloomsbury stand in Germany. The job has gone to Annette Thomas, who has been with the Macmillan Group for 14 years and MD of the expanding Nature Publishing Group since 2000. Charkin was her mentor, and put Thomas forward for the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize for women in publishing, which she won this year.

The promotion makes her a powerful figure in the industry, though it's unlikely that she will play to the gallery. With her academic credentials (first degree from Harvard, a PhD in cell biology from Yale), she doesn't need to. Also, her African American background should help encourage a greater range of talent into the UK business. Hers is an enlightened and exciting appointment.

US attorney Bob Barnett has talked to potential publishers regarding Tony Blair's memoirs. However, another former PM has cast a shadow over Frankfurt. Carol Thatcher has signed with Headline for a memoir about being Margaret's daughter. The project has been bubbling for some time, agented by Ali Gunn at Curtis Brown, and now bought by Val Hudson who, at HarperCollins, published Carol's affectionate memoir of Denis. "A kind of unreliable memoir" is promised for next autumn, full of " Carol's trademark wit".

It's 30 years since the TV adaptation of Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes. The series made a star of Tom Conti and the book sold around three-quarters of a million copies for Penguin. Jeremy Robson's JRBooks is to revive it next month, alongside a sequel, Fame and Fortune, to be dramatised on Radio 4, again starring Conti. The story picks up where Prizes left off, and finds the Cambridge alumni grappling with the harsh realities of Thatcher's Britain.