We have major road closures in and around East London tomorrow due to the "Tour De France", making it impossible for me to do any meat deliveries in Central London. This means that I'll lose money tomorrow. I'm just wondering if the good hard working people of Paris will have the same problem when we have "The London Marathon?" I don't think so... I

Radical, prolific, innovative, brilliant; in his short life James wrote over 2,600 poems. He also founded a commune in Jerusalem after being summoned to do so in a dream. Native peoples, a neighbouring nunnery, people in the cities who struggled with homelessness, drug addiction or shared the poet's ensnarement to alcohol, anyone else who cared to pitch in, all were welcome. This was in 1970, if I had known I would have bust my piggy back and...

This week I’m proud to announce a new collaboration between ABCtales and Unbound - the crowdfunding publisher who have already published one ABCtaler’s novel, Jennifer Pickup’s Unbelievable . Unbound offers a modern take on publishing, putting readers directly in touch with authors. Authors get a platform on Unbound to pitch their book, and if enough readers support it, the book gets published. It’s a simple way of putting the power of...

A good book makes you change your mind. I used to think the dropping of ‘Little Boy’ over Hiroshima was unnecessary. The American and their Allies had control of the skies. They were getting closer to mainland Japan. It was just a matter of time. But this isn’t a history book. This is an old-fashioned testament of the lost and found. Louis Zamperini’s mother was sixteen when she had her second son on January 26th 1917 (he had an elder brother...

It’s one of those weeks when I’m between reads – or at least in a reading slump. I do have a book on the go, Philip Roth’s My Life As a Man , a mid-career book structured in a way that’s somewhere between ingenious and lazy: two long short stories are followed by a novella – which begins with the narrator explaining that he wrote the two preceding stories. While the stories held my attention the novella is just a touch too self-indulgent and...

Many years ago, my age was lower. I was an active lad, a dreamer and time meant fishing, being with buddies and looking forward to 14 when I could go to the movies, since in Quebec most theatres were closed to the under 14 crowd --- a fire in Montreal ravaged 400 victims and that was the knee-jerk reaction to the tragedy. As I continue to add numbers to my age, the past is often relived, through my poems and short stories.

Our judge at Granta, Francisco Vilhena, read and reread the submissions to this summer’s competition, 100 Years On , in search of the voices that spoke loudest to him of the conflict that changed the course of the 20th century. And it was a difficult decision, a very difficult decision. When I asked Francisco on the sixteenth for his verdict he demanded a deferral to go over his short-list a few more times. It was a very close heat. As often...

It's wrong! I sold BI for four months in 1999 and we were simply given the rules, badged up and allocated a pitch. Then we worked. I spoke to a new vendor in my town asking him where the last vendor was. He told me she had been moved because she had not met her targets. She was a friendly lady and a lot of us got to know her and her dogs. The new guy said the changes had been recent 'These days it's more like a business.' Anyone can become...

This Wednesday we had one of the liveliest ABCtales get-togethers I’ve ever been to. From prison-narratives to eerie accordion-accompanied poetry to a stunning set from a handful of My Baby Shot Me Down authors it was ABCtales at its best, and I’d like to thank everyone who came out and took part. One of the things that I was most impressed by was the sheer variety of the work read. From an utterly impressive stream-of-conscious narrative by...

Published posthumously Bulgakov’s classic is one of those books I kept meaning to read. The Master is Satan, or Woland, making a visit to Moscow, to have a look at mankind to see if they’ve changed much. But the master is also a would-be novelist, and the lover of Margarita. He is writing about Pontius Pilate, the astrologer’s son and fifth Procurator of Judea. At the trial of Christ Satan, of course, was there and had a front row seat, so when...