A portrait of the first Children's Laureate from his difficult childhood to a prolific career

Enid Blyton's novels are to be updated, re-illustrated and digitised now Hachette has the world rights. By Nick Clark

Cripes! The Secret Seven are off on a new adventure. They are shelving the jolly japes and following the Famous Five into the digital age, taking modern dialogue with them on their travels.

Resolute in their rejection of Hollywood happy endings, the songs Willy Vlautin writes for Richmond Fontaine are downbeat narratives, related against the tints of a subtle Americana-rock which yaws between country, indie and ambient, as the action demands.

Treehouses can provide a rustic retreat or luxury among the leaves, says Rhiannon Batten

Dark deeds as usual in all-white rural 'bastion'

Crikey! Lovers of Enid Blyton can look forward to lashings of words from the pen of their favourite writer after the discovery of a previously unknown book, written at the height of her imaginative powers.

Dame Helen Mirren and Joanna Lumley are to summon up the "jolly hockey sticks" era for BBC Radio 4 with a season of classic girls' school tales. The stories include Enid Blyton's The Cheat and will be broadcast over three days next month.

<i>The Independent on Sunday</i> has been inundated with stories about the role public libraries have played in readers' lives. Campaigns to stop councils from closing as many as half of their libraries are gathering pace, as public figures protest furiously about 'cultural vandalism'. They share their memories with Nina Lakhani

Enid Blyton must be gyrating in her grave.

Lotte Berk was a charismatic fitness guru in the Sixties, with legions of fans. But she was also cruel, callous and neglectful, says her daughter, Esther, who tells Kate Burt how she learned to forgive

Books: I'm like an old dinosaur living in the countryside writing books in longhand or on my old manual typewriter – but I've learnt a lot about modern technology reading 'In Office Hours' by Lucy Kellaway. A young female executive has an office affair with a young trainee and another one has an affair with her married boss. Naturally, their worlds come unstuck and they are destined for hell and damnation at the end. I just read 'Dash: Bitch of the Year' by Andrew Dilger. More than 10,000 greyhounds die a year. It really upsets me.

A new biography of Roald Dahl throws light on the private life of one of our best-loved writers. But why are so many children's authors such damaged human beings?

You need to have your wits about you at a Laura Solon show. The 2005 Perrier Award winner crams so many jokes, witticisms and observations into her rapidly delivered narratives, it can be all too easy to miss gems. Her writing is tight; in places, it glitters: “She’s not an expert”, runs one delightful epigram. “She has a brain capacity estate agents would call ‘cosy’”.