Hans Fallader wrote Alone in Berlin in several months of ill-health before his death in 1947. Living through the Second World War and being imprisoned, the novelist was heavily influenced by the climate of fear he experienced during Nazi rule. A brilliantly uncomfortable book, it shows the effect of the Gestapo on everyday folk in Berlin, where paranoia and distrust
When I worked at Penguin Books in the 1990s, I was fortunate to work with an inspirational person whose job it was (from a darkened office deep in London W8) to manage the publishers’ full fiction and non-fiction stocklists. These chunky A4 booklets were printed on a monthly basis and needed to take into account every single available title and
Now here’s a serious consideration for all the scavengers amongst us. I was brought up respecting the mystery and romance of second-hand shops, the unwanted-treasure potential of jumble sales. And more recently I discovered the enduring hope associated with the thought of a good car boot sale. What’s going to happen in the future with a dearth of second-hand books
Every article about the construction of online content recommends simplicity, clarity and brevity. Short sentences, pyramid structure, bullet points, lack of repetition. This is widely accepted and backed up by research. But why are we trained to believe in the short, impatient attention span of the average web browser, when we look at how the same audiences tolerate other media?
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