Sympathy for Martin Amis — accused last weekend by Anna Ford of failing to do his duty as a godparent — from AS Byatt. At the Harvill Secker day (see below), she confessed that she has been similarly neglectful. “I’m a godmother to three, and I’ve never done anything godmotherly for any of them,” she [...]

The publisher Harvill Secker held an “International Writing Day” yesterday at Foyles bookshop in London, where contributors included AS Byatt, Joseph O’Connor, Tim Parks and Nicholas Shakespeare. But it was the Galician writer Manuel Rivas who sat longest at the signing table afterwards.
In part, this was a tribute to his performance earlier. A handsome man [...]

I came across Global Voices the other day while doing some background reading about Colombia. The point of the site is to shine light “on places and people other media often ignore”. It does a good job at that. Its Spanish section, complete with summaries and translations of blogs, could also prove extremely useful to [...]

“How long before Ryanair starts charging for emotional baggage?” The question was asked by Ian Moore, one of the comics on the bill at Sway in Covent Garden on Thursday. Then he went on to muse on the conversations that would follow at security: “Did you pack this baggage yourself, sir?” “No, my family had [...]

Another day, another desperate attempt by another travel website to get itself mentioned by publishing a so-called survey.
According to this one, “59% think the English bars and tourists in Spain make the destination ‘not foreign enough’”; “nearly half would take a trip to the USA on the off-chance of meeting a celebrity”; and “2 respondents [...]

If you missed Robert Macfarlane’s programme last night on BBC Two, here’s a sample. Now you’ll probably want to watch the whole thing on iPlayer.

If the phrase “wild Essex” calls nothing more to mind than a hen party in stilettos draining bottles of Bacardi Breezer, maybe you need to read the piece Robert Macfarlane wrote for yesterday’s Review section in The Guardian. It’s what he calls an alternative account of the Essex landscape. Having travelled around Britain and Ireland [...]