Books

Agatha Christie’s classic novel Murder Is Easy will be adapted into a two-part thriller for the BBC, the broadcaster announced on Tuesday. Known as one of the Queen of Crime’s most disconcerting novels, the eerie whodunnit was first published in the 1930s and has been a cult favourite with fans …

GMB: Michael Rosen looks back on his battle with coronavirus Michael Rosen is pondering his feelings towards health secretary turned I’m A Celebrity insect-muncher Matt Hancock and our elected leaders over their handling of the covid pandemic that nearly cost him his life. “How do I feel about the way …

John Sweeney in his lucky orange hat (Image: ) It’s a typical Sweeney anecdote, managing to convey both the former Panorama and Newsnight broadcaster’s swashbuckling approach to war reporting and his self-deprecating sense of humour. “When things are this bad in the world, you’ve got to laugh,” he smiles. Sweeney …

The Headmaster – “terrified that one free mind would bring the edifice to nought” – forces him to eat his congealed semolina, which he does, “unblinking, jam-eyed, quizzical.” Then, remembers Barrie, writing some seventy years later, “The Head departs – threat repulsed,/but I saw truths, invisible.” The first of these …

Bond star Roger Moore and the Bond Girls from ‘View to a Kill’ (Image: Getty) As confident in the bedroom as in a gunfight, irresistibly attractive, and often deadly, Ian Fleming’s Bond Girls are some of the coolest female characters in fiction and on the big screen. But how did …

Carolyn Mayling lost her daughter Rosie (L) to an auto-immune disease and then had another child (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster/Handout) Carolyn Mayling’s vivacious daughter Rosie was just 11 when she died suddenly in May 2003. “Mummy, I am going to die of this,” she had declared fearfully the previous December when …

A grieving mother who lost an 11-year-old daughter gave birth at the age of 54 thanks to a stranger. Carolyn Mayling, now 68, used donor eggs from a stranger in Moldova to fall pregnant with son Dom, who is now 14. Carolyn, who has just published a book about her …

Liz McConaghy in her Chinook (Image: Liz McConaghy) Helmand, Afghanistan, January 2007. The unmistakable thud of a dozen rotor blades from the two RAF Chinooks echoed across the desert and poppy fields as the helicopters barrelled into hostile territory. This was one of the deadliest war zones in the world …

William Shakespeare has fallen foul of modern-day sensibilities after theatre bosses slapped a “misogyny and racism” warning on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The playwright’s enduring comedy has been regularly performed at the three incarnations of London’s Globe Theatre for the past 400 years. The latest version, telling the tale of …

Lee and Andrew Child are among a stellar line-up as the world’s most famous crime writing festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this summer. The Jack Reacher creator, who now collaborates with his younger brother on the best-selling books about the ex-military cop, is returning to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime …