Cover Stories: John Profumo; Man Booker sponsorship

It seems that we will hear John Profumo's side of the story. The late Minister of War had been working with his son, novelist David Profumo, on "a family memoir" due this autumn. Bringing the House Down has been bought by John Murray; its MD Roland Philipps worked with David on his novel, Sea Music. The project was initiated by Valerie Hobson, John's actress wife, who died in 1998. Both parents talked extensively to their son, whose manuscript was delivered just a week before John's death.

* The Man Group will be giving more loot to literature, thanks to a new five-year deal to sponsor the Man Booker Prize. The agreement, active from November, covers the annual Man Booker and the biennial International prize, and is worth a cool £1m. per year. But the Whitbread Awards still languish in a sponsor-less limbo after the leisure group bowed out in January, ending its 35 years of support.