Books

Youngsters have traditionally found joy in using paints and pencils – but now they can also generate images and words by pressing a few keys on computers or phones.Axel – who has illustrated many books for young readers such as The Gruffalo, Zog and The Highway Rat – is worried this will stifle creativity.He said: “AI is a worrying development. I am all for kids drawing with pencils and paints and we need to protect this from AI.“It is a worrying development and I do not know what the future will bring. But I would always defend people creating, rather than having something artificial.”Asked if technology was likely to affect his career, he admitted: “I am ignoring that whole AI thing and maybe I am naive and stupid.“I know if you say, ‘Do something in the style of Axel Scheffler’ then ...

Prince Harry's memoir Spare hit a humiliating milestone after it emerged as the most traded-in biography of 2024.The bombshell book, which was first released in its hardpack edition in 2023 and in its paperback edition last October, contained several explosive claims about the Duke of Sussex's life within the Firm.On its release, it broke records as the fastest-selling book of all time.But now, We Buy Book, a website that buys unwanted second-hand books, claimed Spare was the most traded-in biography for the second year in a row.A spokesperson for the website said: "For the second year running, Prince Harry's Spare is the most traded-in biography of 2024."This year, we purchased a total of 567 copies."While Spare's hardpack edition costs £28 at Waterstones, We Buy Books reportedly offer...

To order any of the books of featured visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25Wyndham and Bannerjee creator Abir Mukherjee, above, whose standalone thriller Hunted (Vintage) is out, now says: “Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (Macmillan) follows Dave Win, an Anglo-Burmese man, from childhood and through his life as an actor. It’s a poignant book about race, class and sexuality in a changing Britain. Hollinghurst has rightly been described as the UK’s finest living author. The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (Vintage) is a Senegalese writer’s quest to uncover the fate of a vanished author, the book weaves together colonial history, identity, and the power of literature. Absolutely haunting.” (Image: Express...

To order any of the books of featured visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25Sir Ian Rankin, above, whose 25th Rebus novel Midnight And Blue (Orion) was one of the smash hits of the autumn, says: “White City by Dominic Nolan (Headline) features postwar, but pre-groovy London in all its gangland glory as communities and individuals clash and race tensions reach boiling point. A hard-hitting novel with a very human heart. Missing Person: Alice by Simon Mason (Quercus) sees a detective specialising in finding people long disappeared methodically searching for a young woman. Hints of Georges Simenon here though the story is set in contemporary England. It’s lean, tense, gripping.” (Image: Orion)Tessa Hadley, above, whose latest...

Dave Rowntree, Damon Albarn, Alex James and Graham Coxon of Blur (Image: Getty Images)Blur bassist Alex James has revealed how the band was fined £20,000 for smoking on stage when they played their two massive reunion gigs at Wembley Stadium. The musician turned farmer, who was rarely without a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth in the Britpop band’s nineties heyday, chuckles: “It’s all there in the tour accounts!”By then, having played to 180,000 ecstatic fans at the sold-out London shows – their best ever, he believes – as well as tens of thousands more around the world, Blur could afford the write-off. But rewind to the run-up to last year’s reunion, and James admits money was so tight he was forced to borrow from his mother-in-law.Sitting on a sofa in a converted thres...

Conservationists Gerald and Lee Durrell with lemurs at Jersey Zoo in 1987 (Image: Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.)The legendary naturalist Gerald Durrell once noted that “so-called human progress proceeds at the speed of an Exocet missile, whereas conservation proceeds at the pace of a donkey and cart”. Yet, according to his widow Lee, there could never be any question of giving up – and the phrase “lost cause” was a “red rag to a bull”. Nowhere is this philosophy more apparent than in his unpublished writing, pulled together by Lee Durrell in a new book to mark the centenary of his birth next year.Drawing on an unfinished memoir – as well as the bones of an unpublished account of his 1969 trip to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Northern Territory and Queensland – Myself & Othe...

The last time George RR Martin published a novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series was in 2011 when Game of Thrones was debuting on HBO.Since then, the 76-year-old has continued to work on the penultimate book, The Winds of Winter, which still doesn’t have a publication date over five years after the TV show ended.At one point, he was rushing to get it written before season 6 began development, but in the end, he gave the showrunners his planned plot points for his last two books so they could finish Game of Thrones.The author sporadically gives vague progress updates on his blog, at one point implying that The Winds of Winter would be published by Summer 2020.And now his latest news is a devastating confession that fans could probably see coming.Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter,...

By inputting the amount of time you spend browsing content on your phone, a new online tool reveals what novels you could have read in the time you spend aimlessly scrolling.It includes literary works like Dracula, Dune, and It. While other featured titles include Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.The new tools follows a survey that revealed the average smartphone user typically spends over two hours a day on their device - that's two-and-a-half days a month.In this time, if reading at an average pace of 250 words per minute, they could have finished F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in less than a day or Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace in about nine.The study discovered that the average adults typically ...

Award-winning actor Ralph Ineson stars as a jail inmate who finds solace and redemption through reading in a short film highlighting the work of a charity that helps prisoners find joy in books.Ineson, best known for playing Finchy in The Office alongside Ricky Gervais, appears as ‘Declan’, who joins a session run by Prison Reading Groups (PRG), leading to a second chance at connecting with his estranged daughter ‘Alice’ (played by his real-life daughter, Rebecca Ineson, 21).They bond over My Name is Leon by the award-winning author Kit de Waal.Ineson, 54, said: “Being involved with this film opened my eyes to the connection to the outside world that books give a prisoner, particularly through sharing a book with their family and friends.“I had the great joy of working with my real daug...

Yesterday morning, Stephen Fry made a surprise appearance at London Waterloo train station to give a reading from his new book.The Harry Potter narrator performed an immersive segment of his retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, which is now available on Penguin Audio.The 67-year-old’s latest work is the fourth and final instalment in his versions of Greek myths from Heroes and Mythos to Troy.Coinciding with the launch, YouGov has polled over 2000 Brits in a new UK poll to discover the nation’s favourite celebrity storyteller.In a shocking result, a Doctor Who star beat Fry by a single percentage point to the top spot.The 10th and 14th Doctor Who David Tennant came out on top as Britain’s favourite celebrity storyteller with 37 per cent of the vote just ahead of Fry on 36 per cent. However, the...