It was supposed to be “the war that will end war” – according to the misplaced optimism of British author H.G. Wells, and countless others like him who cheerfully expected “our boys” to be home by Christmas 1914.   Involving all the world’s great powers, more than 70 million combatants, and ...read more →

In the week that Microsoft bought a fifth of Barnes & Noble’s digital businesses, and we learned that e-books sales grew 360% in the UK last year, we thought at The Naked Book we’d ignore all that – and focus on ‘mummy porn’. Why?  Well, it was the public wot ...read more →

“I wanted to know what went on -what really went on – inside Viacom/CBS… about the collaboration between very big business and very big government.”  So says television legend Dan Rather in this special edition of The Debriefer.   ”I knew that a lot had gone on behind the scenes [in ...read more →

His origins were humble; a working-class boy from a small military town in northern Sweden, not far from the Arctic Circle.  Today, he is one of the most influential figures in the world of literature, because  Peter Englund is Permanent Secretary to the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the ...read more →

He’s been charged by elephants, black-listed by the Malaysian government, caught-up in tribal warfare in New Guinea and been bitten, stung and infected by creatures still unknown to science. Tonight, Rhett Butler (yes, that really is his name and no, we’re not afraid to go there) talks to us. Rhett ...read more →

Once every generation or two, a book comes along that incarnates our collective experience of war.  Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was one such: Heller’s Catch-22 was another, and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five was one more.  To this distinguished list must be added Ben Fountain‘s first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long ...read more →

It was an iconic murder – pre-dating the mysterious death of British biological warfare expert David Kelly, but bearing uncanny similarities, too.  Rose grower, naturalist, diarist and campaigner against nuclear energy and weapons, Hilda Murrell was truly a Miss Marple character, and her murder in 1984 entered the national consciousness ...read more →