There was a quirky correspondence in the Times over the new year about One-Book Wonders, which is to say, authors who have only managed to produce one book. Two of the most famous examples cited were Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.

As it happens, three of my very favourite novels are also...

I went to see "2012", the new Roland Emmerich film, last week. Its first two hours are laughably bad and unfortunately the last hour is just bad—but as John Cusack tore his way across a disintegrating LA, as St Peter’s in Rome collapsed on thousands of wailing devotees, as a vast tsunami devoured the entire planet, how...

I recently found myself in the media, fighting the latest government insanity. It was announced a few weeks ago that from November, children's authors who wish to visit schools will have to sign onto a database, paying £64 each, to prove that they're not paedophiles.

Headed by Philip Pullman, a number of authors suggested that this...

It's the £2.50 Kit Kat that gets me.

I mean, I'm no saint—but there have often been times when I've been away on a book tour and found myself in a grotty hotel in the middle of nowhere. It's 11 o'clock at night and I've gone to the mini bar and there it is, the Kit Kat Chunky. I don't just want it. I need it. More than that,...