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Dara O'Briain

Publication Date: Thu, 30/07/2009 - 16:02

Right now Dara O'Briain is a rarity in the publishing world: a stand-up comedian with a book out this autumn which isn't a memoir. I'm sure I'm not the first person to point that out when we meet at Penguin's offices but he chuckles: "I'm amazed that they all go for memoirs, I'm genuinely shocked....

Alice O'Keefe | Alice O'Keeffe | author profile | Authors | Dara O'Briain | Home
Harry's game

Publication Date: Fri, 24/07/2009 - 13:51

It is amazing what passes for television these days. A man sitting on top of a gigantic jelly singing ‘“We are the world", accompanied by a knitted puppet does not immediately sound like award-winning programming. But this is the norm for “Harry Hill's TV Burp".

Since 2001, it has been surreally taking the...

author profile | Authors | Ebury | Graeme Neill | Harry Hill
Letters to America

Publication Date: Mon, 20/07/2009 - 10:43

"I've got so many things wrong with me. Fatal illnesses. I could die tomorrow if I chose to but I'm hanging on for those letters." It's difficult to believe these words coming from the mouth of Frances Woodsford. In her dapper light green dress suit and matching shoes the 95-year-old self-confessed "chatterbox"...

author profile | Authors | Chatto | Frances Woodsford | Home | Katie Coyne
Close to home

Publication Date: Fri, 10/07/2009 - 14:42

William Boyd's new novel Ordinary Thunderstorms comes—in a very  literal sense—close to home.

When in London (he also has a place in France), the writer lives in a terraced house in Chelsea, just two blocks from the Thames. His daily walk takes him across Chelsea or Albert Bridge and through Battersea Park...

author profile | Authors | Benedicte Page | Bloomsbury | Home | william boyd
The cat's whiskers

Publication Date: Fri, 03/07/2009 - 08:00

The first inkling animator Simon Tofield had that the short cartoon featuring his new kitten might be a success was a phone call from the US company which had posted it on its website. He remembers: "They phoned me up two days later and said 'It's almost crashed our server twice . . . you've got to do something with this, you...

Alice O'Keeffe | author profile | Canongate | Simon Tofield | Simon's Cat
The Book of Nick

Publication Date: Thu, 25/06/2009 - 16:20

Nick Cave does not disappoint. Anyone who has come across the rock legend will testify to his brooding presence, particularly as the willowy front-man to his band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Up close, Cave inhabits this persona with an intense yet disarming charm. "I am interested in extreme characters," he drawls.

Cave's...

author profile | Authors | Canongate | Home | Nick Cave | Philip Jones
Seven days with Sebastian

Publication Date: Thu, 18/06/2009 - 15:54

When the banking world began to come crashing down around our ears, novelist Sebastian Faulks said he found it "frightening, genuinely very frightening", not least because his own bank was one of those directly affected. "I went to see my bank manager and he told me he had had people wanting to take out thousands of pounds of...

author profile | Authors | Benedicte Page | Home | Sebastian Faulks | Todays Picks
Nick bares all

Publication Date: Fri, 12/06/2009 - 07:00

Eighteen months ago, Nick Hornby could not have foreseen that the latter half of 2009 would be so busy. Over the next six months Hornby will be working on a musical collaboration with American musician Ben Folds, his film adaptation of the Lynn Barber memoir An Adaptation will be released and a radio comedy series which he co-wrote...

author profile | Authors | Graeme Neill | Home | NIck Hornby | Todays Picks | Viking
Atwood's songs of praise

Publication Date: Mon, 08/06/2009 - 12:32

Sitting in a deck chair in Green Park, central London, Margaret Atwood explains that writing a selection of hymns—including one praising the "tiny perfect moles that garden underground"—for her latest novel, was perfectly natural. "They would have hymns," she says, simply. The "they" Atwood refers to...

author profile | Authors | Bloomsbury | Home | Katie Coyne | Margaret Atwood | Todays Picks
Sex on the brain

Publication Date: Fri, 22/05/2009 - 14:20

"We think it's probably the hottest subject in the world right now, and the sort of thing you can now talk about quite openly in public." Allan Pease, genial gravelly-voiced Australian, is talking about the subject of his latest book Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (Orion, September).

It's a book he...

Alice O'Keeffe | Allan Pease | author profile | Authors | Home | In Depth | Orion