Category Archives: Books

Forensic study finds Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned

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The toxin clostridium botulinum was in his body when he died in 1973, days after Chile’s military coup

One of the most enduring mysteries in modern Chilean history may finally have been solved after forensic experts determined that the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died after being poisoned with a powerful toxin, apparently confirming decades of suspicions that he was murdered.

According to the official version, Neruda – who made his name as a young poet with the collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair – died from prostate cancer and malnutrition on 23 September 1973, just 12 days after the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of his friend, President Salvador Allende.

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Anne Boleyn’s reputation as ‘temptress’ to be recast in new exhibition

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Henry VIII’s second wife was a deeply religious woman who resisted his advances for years, according to fresh research

Anne Boleyn was found guilty of adultery, incest and conspiracy – all, almost certainly, false charges trumped up by Henry VIII – and then executed. For centuries, her reputation was that of a scheming seducer.

Now Anne is being recast as a deeply religious woman who, far from plotting to become Henry’s second wife, bade her time for six years as a lady-in-waiting to the king’s consort, Catherine of Aragon. She deliberately never consummated her relationship with Henry until their “unofficial” marriage in November 1532 – just two months before their formal wedding.

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Prosecutors likened Trump to mob boss and had to prove he wasn’t insane – book

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Mark Pomerantz, who was on New York team investigating tax affairs, reportedly compares ex-president to John Gotti

New York prosecutors building a case against Donald Trump for allegedly lying about his wealth for tax purposes had to show the former president was “not legally insane”, one of those prosecutors reportedly writes in an eagerly awaited new book.

The lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, also reportedly compares Trump, the only confirmed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, to famous figures in the world of organised crime including John Gotti, the “Teflon Don” who died in prison in 2002.

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Sicilian mobster asks judge to order seizure of Roberto Saviano book

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Giuseppe Graviano files for defamation against Gomorrah author over origin of nickname

A Sicilian mobster has asked a judge to order the seizure of all copies of a book by the author Roberto Saviano, who is living under police protection after he faced death threats for exposing mafia secrets.

Giuseppe Graviano, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison, filed a lawsuit for defamation last week against the author of books including Gomorrah, and Solo è il Coraggio (Lonely is the Courage), about the life of the judge Giovanni Falcone, who was killed by the mafia in 1992.

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Washington Post condemns Pompeo for ‘vile’ Khashoggi ‘falsehoods’

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Fred Ryan says former secretary of state ‘outrageously misrepresents’ Post journalist murdered by Saudi Arabian regime

The publisher of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan, has blasted the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for “outrageously misrepresenting” and “spreading vile falsehoods” about Jamal Khashoggi, the Post columnist murdered by the Saudi Arabian regime in 2018.

“It is shameful that Pompeo would spread vile falsehoods to dishonor a courageous man’s life and service and his commitment to principles Americans hold dear as a ploy to sell books,” Ryan said.

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Mike Pompeo dismisses ‘faux outrage’ over murder of Jamal Khashoggi

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Former Trump secretary of state claims US media depicted Washington Post columnist as ‘a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward’

The former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has dismissed the indignation prompted by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi as “faux outrage” – and cast doubt on whether the Washington Post columnist was a genuine journalist at all.

In his new book, Pompeo says that Khashoggi – who was killed by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018 – was not “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward martyred for bravely criticising the Saudi royal family”.

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‘Medieval institution’: Commonwealth Guardian readers on Prince Harry’s Spare

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Comments range from ‘the monarchy is valuable’ to ‘Harry and Meghan are having their cake and eating it’

Last week, the tell-all autobiography by Prince Harry, Spare, was released and sold a combined 1,430,000 copies on its first day on sale in the US, Canada and the UK.

Here, readers from Commonwealth countries share their thoughts on Prince Harry, his new book and whether the controversies surrounding the royal family have changed their views towards the monarchy.

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Hong Kong police arrest six for selling ‘seditious’ book at lunar new year fair

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Six people accused of publishing book relating to 2019 protests in move critics say has spread terror

Police in Hong Kong have raided a lunar new year shopping fair and arrested six people for selling a “seditious” book related to the 2019 anti-government protests in a move critics say has spread “terror” just days before the celebrations.

National security officers accused three men and three women, aged between 18 and 62, of producing and publishing “a seditious book about a series of riots that occurred in Hong Kong from June 2019 to February 2020”, and selling it in a lunar new year stall in a shopping centre in Mong Kok, a bustling shopping district.

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‘Queen’ is UK children’s word of the year for 2022

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Almost half of the children surveyed by Oxford University Press chose ‘Queen’ as their top word, with ‘happy’ and ‘chaos’ in second and third place

“Queen” has been chosen by young people as the Oxford children’s word of the year for 2022.

Almost half of children surveyed by Oxford University Press (OUP) chose “Queen” as their word of the year. In second place was “happy”, chosen by 36% of children, with “chaos” coming in third with 14% of the vote.

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Ex-secretary of state George Shultz was besotted by Theranos fraudster Holmes, book says

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He was either ‘corrupt’, ‘in love’ or had ‘completely lost’ his mental edge, says grandson who blew whistle on Holmes’s scheme

Former US secretary of state George Shultz’s support for Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent blood testing company, Theranos, which devastated his family and caused a bitter feud with his grandson, receives fresh scrutiny in a biography published on Tuesday.

Shultz was Ronald Reagan’s top diplomat at the end of the cold war. Before that, he was secretary of the treasury and secretary of labor under Richard Nixon. He is now the subject of In the Nation’s Service, written by Philip Taubman, a former New York Times reporter.

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Russell Banks, award-winning fiction writer, dies at 82

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American novelist wrote about rural working class communities and those who died trying to break out in his native north-east

Russell Banks, an award-winning fiction writer who rooted such novels as Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter in the wintry, rural communities of his native north-east and imagined the dreams and downfalls of everyone from modern blue-collar workers to the radical abolitionist John Brown, has died. He was 82.

Banks, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, died Saturday in upstate New York, his editor, Dan Halpern, told the Associated Press. Banks was being treated for cancer, Halpern said.

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US interest grows after Prince Harry book revelations

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New York Times suggests Spare could be one of most divisive celebrity memoirs as comedians and talkshow hosts weigh in

Concern, comedy, and confusion – Prince Harry’s upcoming book has generated different reactions across the US, his adopted home country.

Excerpts from the autobiography Spare were leaked last week with bombshell revelations, including an alleged physical assault by his brother William; the brothers requesting that their father, now King Charles, not marry Camilla; and Harry’s apparent killing of 25 Taliban soldiers while serving in the British army in Afghanistan.

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Army veterans criticise Prince Harry’s claim he killed 25 Taliban in Afghanistan

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Col Tim Collins says ‘we don’t do notches on rifle butt’ and kill-count talk could increase Harry’s personal security risk

High-profile British veterans have criticised the Duke of Sussex’s claim he had killed 25 Taliban soldiers while serving with the British army in Afghanistan and warned the high-profile admission could increase the risk to his personal security.

The retired army veteran Col Tim Collins, best known for delivering a rousing speech before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, said the prince’s kill-count talk was crass and “we don’t do notches on the rifle butt”.

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Indie bookshop numbers hit 10-year high in 2022 defying brutal UK retail year

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Lockdowns were good news for book trade as people read more and sought out bookshops when they reopened

The number of independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland climbed to a 10-year high in 2022, as the book trade defied the odds in an otherwise brutal year for high street retailers.

The lifestyle changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns were a boon for the book trade, as Britons with more time on their hands read more and sought out bookshops when they reopened.

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National Library of Australia’s free digital archives may be forced to close without funding

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With only six months worth of funding left, library’s director general faces ‘very big decisions’ on the future of Trove

The future of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s expansive public digital archives, is in doubt with just six months funding left, with the library’s director general revealing that it is facing “very, very big decisions” in the next few months, if the government does not step in with funding.

Trove, a free online resource used by thousands of researchers, academics and members of the public, receives more than 20m hits each year. It has been treading water for the past six years, drip-fed by the federal government to the tune of about $5m annually.

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Africa’s biggest photography library opens in Ghana

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Ghanaian photographer’s crowdfunded project won support of Humans of New York author and boasts more than 30,000 books

The largest photography library in Africa has opened in Ghana’s capital, Accra, showcasing the work of the continent and diaspora’s forgotten, established and emerging talent.

Founded by Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson, the Dikan Center houses more than 30,000 books he has collected. The first of its kind in Ghana, a photo studio and classrooms provide space for workshops while a fellowship programme is aimed at African documentarians and visual artists. An exhibition space will host regular shows, the first of which is Ahennie, a series by the late Ghanaian documentary photographer Emmanuel Bobbie (also known as Bob Pixel), who died in 2021.

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James Patterson to complete unfinished Michael Crichton book

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Late author’s estate has shared a manuscript with the bestselling novelist centered on a volcanic eruption in Hawaii

The bestselling author James Patterson is set to complete an unfinished manuscript from the late Michael Crichton.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Crichton’s estate has provided him with over 100 pages of a novel about the imminent eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, which threatens a secret cache of deadly chemical weapons. Just last month, the volcano did start erupting.

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Huge decline of working class people in the arts reflects fall in wider society

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Study shows the proportion of musicians, writers and artists with working-class origins has shrunk by half since the 1970s

The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, new research shows.

Analysis of Office for National Statistics data found that 16.4% of creative workers born between 1953 and 1962 had a working-class background, but that had fallen to just 7.9% for those born four decades later.

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Canadian journalist’s memoir accused of depicting sexual assault as consensual

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Film-maker Zoe Greenberg says she raised concerns with Penguin Random House Canada over Leah McLaren’s book

A Canadian film-maker who was allegedly sexually assaulted as a teenager has accused the country’s largest book publisher of knowingly releasing a memoir by one of her alleged assailants that depicts the incident as consensual.

In a 6 December post on Medium, Zoe Greenberg claimed she was subjected to a sexual assault in her youth.

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Europe’s largest Middle Eastern bookseller to close

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Al Saqi Books in London, which was established in 1978, blames closure on rise in prices of Arabic-language books and ‘detrimental’ effect of Brexit

Europe’s largest specialist bookseller for Middle Eastern books, based in London, has been forced to close because of the hike in prices of Arabic-language books and because Brexit has been “detrimental” to its business.

Al Saqi Books in Bayswater opened in 1978, and sells books on the Middle East and north Africa in English, and on all subjects in Arabic.

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