17 h. ago 'I wrote a book and published it online. When I woke up next morning it was number one in the charts'

Sophie Gravia swapped nursing for writing and now the author of bestselling The Glasgow Kiss book series and The Dicktionary Club has a BBC podcast

Politics

31 h. ago Richard Flanagan: ‘When I reread Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop it had corked badly’

The Booker-winning author on taking inspiration from Kafka, and a youthful passion for Jackie CollinsMy earliest reading memoryMy mother reading Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to me – and reading it again and again, because I loved it and her. I was perhaps three. We lived in a little mining town in the middle of the rainforest. It was always raining and the rain drummed on the tin roof. To this day that’s the sound I long to hear when I relax into a book – a voice in the stormy dark reminding me that I am not alone.My favourite book growing upBooks were an odyssey in which I lost and found myself, with new favourites being constantly supplanted by fresh astonishments. Rather than a favourite book I had a favourite place: the local public library. I enjoyed an inestimable amount of trash, beginning with comics and slowly venturing out into penny dreadful westerns and bad science fiction and on to the wonderfully lurid pulp of Harold Robbins, Henri Charrière, Alistair MacL...

Politics

36 h. ago ‘Basically impossible to get them back’: Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime, say experts

As territories shift and divide families, desperate parents are travelling to Russia to find their children, many of whom have been moved into military camps or orphanagesAs many as 35,000 Ukrainian children are still missing and thought to be held in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to an American team of experts, with families saying they are being forced to take desperate and risky measures to try to rescue them.As Russian forces began their invasion in February 2022, children were abducted from care homes, from the battlefield after the death of their parents, or under coercion directly from their families. Continue reading...

Events

50 h. ago How we're killing our microbiome and kimchi alone won't save it – video

Our human microbiome is in decline, which is likely to be contributing to the sharp rise in non-communicable diseases, health conditions that cannot be directly transmitted between people, such as cardiovascular disease and cancers. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Dr James Kinross, colorectal surgeon and author of the book Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome, about why the human microbiome is in decline, how modern life is impacting it and what we can do to look after itJames Kinross also appeared recently on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, you can listen here:Your microbiome questions answered: part oneYour microbiome questions answered: part two Continue reading...

Events

51 h. ago Number of children with special educational needs plans surges by 10% in a year to increase burden on cash

According to figures from the Department for Education (DfE), there were 638,700 children and young people with an education, health and care (EHC) plan in January this year.

Politics

65 h. ago Celebrities are not putting enough care into their children’s books, says author

Katherine Rundell said that ‘a high percentage’ of children’s books, published under a celebrity name, may have been ghost-written.

Culture

3 d. ago ‘We think Princess Pearl is a feminist icon’: readers’ favourite Julia Donaldson books

Characters who challenge stereotypes, stories that stimulate little ones’ vocabulary, endless laughter and moments guaranteed to make any dad cry. Here are your takes on the work of a beloved children’s author• Julia Donaldson’s best books – ranked!Last week, Stuart Heritage ranked his 15 favourite books by Julia Donaldson, and readers have responded with their own opinions, along with memories of reading her beloved stories to their children. Here are some of the most popular picks from the Gruffalo author’s gigantic oeuvre.*** Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago A Court of Thorns and Roses set for major franchise development amid TV series rumours

The #Booktok favourite author of hit series ACOTAR, Throne of Glass and Crescent City has just signed this historic merch deal, suggesting the full franchise treatment of Harry Potter

Events

4 d. ago Joke book created in memory of hockey player who died from meningitis

Big Eddie’s Joke Book is a tribute to Eddie Rosen, son of children’s author and poet, Michael Rosen.

Sport

5 d. ago Gino D'Acampo 'puts £4.2m mansion up for sale' as he plots TV comeback after 'tough time'

After undertaking a huge restoration job, Gino D'Acampo is said be ready to cash in on the incredible seven-bedroom mansion he shares with his wife and three children

Economics

5 d. ago Test your Love Island knowledge with our 10th anniversary quiz!

Love Island is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and we’ve put together a juicy trivia quiz to test your villa knowledge. Can you remember every graft, grovel, and firepit fallout from the past decade?

Politics

6 d. ago Four nurses investigated over death of boy, 5, at flagship children’s care home

Exclusive: Nurses facing fitness to practise probe as The Independent reveals a litany of failings at one of Britain’s biggest care homes for disabled children

Events

7 d. ago 'Courageous' victim of cruel and depraved Scots foster couple dies suddenly

The 36-year-old’s 'unexplained' death came less than two years after cruel Sandra and Andrew Harper, of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, were convicted of offences against five children in their care.

Events

8 d. ago Kate Middleton issues 'caring' message after pulling out of Royal Ascot appearance

The Princess of Wales has written a personal message to mark Children's Hospice Week, which is being led by Together for Short Lives, the charity for children's palliative care

Politics

8 d. ago Call to end postcode lottery in children’s social care after Sara Sharif tragedy

A Liberal Democrat peer has tabled amendments that aim to give a ‘basic level of protection’ to every child.

Politics

9 d. ago Hark by Alice Vincent audiobook review – a search for silence

A former music journalist’s exploration of how we listen is informed by her life-changing experience of motherhoodWhen did you last experience total silence? In Hark, the author Alice Vincent goes to extreme lengths to eradicate noise as she spends time in an anechoic chamber, a heavily soundproofed space designed to swallow up sound waves. There she becomes aware of the noises of her own body, from involuntary swallowing to the soft, high-pitched ringing in her ears. But rather than feel unease, she is “confronted with a comfort I couldn’t have imagined – and a familiarity with quietude I didn’t realise I was living in”.Hark is a book about listening, being heard and the author’s shifting relationship with sound in the early years of motherhood. While working as a music journalist in her 20s, Vincent had been surrounded by noise. But now, in her 30s and plunged into domesticity, she finds herself craving quiet. She also examines how others experience sound, investiga...

Politics

9 d. ago A US senator’s X posts after the Minnesota shootings were horrific – and predictable | Austin Sarat

Mike Lee knows better than to turn tragedy into disinformation. But outrageousness has become the name of the gameNational tragedy used to bring national unity. If only momentarily, partisanship was put aside, and people of all political persuasions came together.No more. The nation received a startling reminder of that sad fact on Sunday when Republican senator Mike Lee went online to share his reaction to the weekend’s horrible shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses.Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Now Stephen Fry turns on JK Rowling: Star who narrated Harry Potter books says the author has been 'radicalised by TERFs' and is 'a lost cause'

EXCL: The comedian, who previously hosted QI, told how he used to have dinner regularly with the author and described her views towards the trans community as 'strange'.

Culture

9 d. ago Families of trans kids worry about what's next after Supreme Court rules on gender

A U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is leaving transgender children and their parents uncertain and anxious about its impact

Events

1 week ago Holloway review – brave women go back to prison to unlock their stories

In this powerful documentary, six former inmates revisit their old cells to reflect on the childhood trauma and domestic abuse that led them to prisonYou can be told the statistics: 30% of women in prison spent time in care as children, and 70% have been the victim of domestic abuse. But what this powerful documentary from Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson (the latter of whom is the director of just-released film Lollipop) does is to demonstrate the cruelty and injustice of a system that incarcerates the vulnerable.Shot in 2021, it follows six women returning to HMP Holloway in London before demolition began a year later. In the first scenes, they walk back into the prison, some into their old cells. The building is abandoned, ivy creeps up through the floorboards, but it’s still Holloway: “Fuck, I remember this smell,” says one. During a week-long workshop the women – brave and unfailingly articulate – share their stories. All of them experienced trauma in childhood, most masked ...

Events