Hilary Rubinstein lived during a golden age of publishing, when publishers and literary agents (and he'd been both) were gentlemen, kept their words and always answered your letters. His long and mostly happy life was marked by his enthusiasms: for his family, for good books of every sort, for small, owner-run hotels and for chocolate. He was the youngest of three sons of a very old Anglo-Jewish family. One ancestor, a quill-maker, averted an attempt on the life of George III, and was rewarded with the royal warrant for quills.

The Fiction Uncovered prize is an unusual one, in that it selects eight titles instead of one winner each year. Its remit is quite simple: to “uncover and celebrate our best British writers”.

Literary festivals are supposed to broaden the mind, but Matthew Bell would rather stay at home with a good book

Where are you now and what can you see?

The Week In Books

It was handed to the community by author Mark Twain more than a hundred years ago. Now that community is fighting to keep it open. A group of protesters became a figurehead for the host of anti-library closure campaigns across the country yesterday as they barricaded the doors and stopped its shelves being stripped of books.

It was handed to the local community by the author Mark Twain more than a hundred years ago. Now that community is fighting to keep it. Protesters are barricading the doors of their local library in a bid to stop the council clearing its shelves of books.

The bill for rubber stamps alone comes to twice that of the defence budget

In celebration of the woman who scared my mother

Where are you now and what can you see?

Debunking literature's untouchables

Where are you now and what can you see?

Where are you now and what can you see?