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 →

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 →

Geoff Dyer is the consummate writer’s writer: winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize, the US National Book Critics Circle Award the E. M. Forster Award, and more.  The Daily Telegraph newspaper has called him “the best living writer in Britain”.  Zadie Smith believes he is “a national treasure.” This is ...read more →

With 270 million copies of his books in circulation, Jeffrey Archer can justly claim to be one of the world’s all-time bestselling novelists.  From his first book way back in 1976 – rejected by fifteen publishers – to his current worldwide hit The Sins Of The Father – his writer’s ...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 →

To mark the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice, Peter takes tea with Claire Harman, author of the highly acclaimed biography Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World.  If you share E. M. Forster’s passion – “I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile ...read more →

It’s not often we have a real-life spy as our special guest on LAD – but tonight, stepping out of the shadows and into our spotlight is special guest Major David Thorp – a man who has spent his entire life in signals intelligence (SIGINT)… from the Cold War to ...read more →