Intrepid Louisa Waugh discovers friendship and fascination in the ‘world’s largest open-air prison’, writes David Robinson

CURTIS Sittenfeld came to prominence on both sides of the Atlantic with her daring and provocative 2008 novel American Wife, which was loosely based on the life of Laura Bush but was really a study of the marriage of opposites.

THIS could have been, and at times very nearly is, a most touching book: a correspondence between two men, one in his sixties, the other turning 70, both highly regarded novelists (one having won the ultimate accolade, the Nobel Prize), striking sparks off each other, shedding light on their work and becoming friends in the process.

BY THE time British troops start coming home for good some time towards the end of next year, the 12-year campaign in Afghanistan will have cost UK taxpayers at least £40 billion – probably more.

Death hovers over Iain Banks’s last novel but that doesn’t stop it being wonderfully exuberant, says Allan Massie

An eighth try at a life of the Queen of the Nile brilliantly mixes history and autobiography

Lots of us have heard the story of the Profumo scandal. Half a century ago, the Minister of War was connected, through an exotic dancer, to a Soviet naval attaché; later, there was a show trial, a high-profile death and gossip that lasted for decades.

‘MY TIMING could not have been better,” Jimmy Connors declares in The Outsider, referring to his becoming the world’s top-ranked tennis player in the mid-70s, just as the sport became big business.

IN HIS travel books, more obviously so than in his fiction, Paul Theroux likes to work hard for the reader.

ONE book Mervyn King, the departing governor of the Bank of ­England, could be ­forgiven for leaving out of his summer holdall is this well-argued tome in which HSBC’s head of economics argues that things are nowhere near as good as they look.

IF THE science fiction novels that he has produced as Iain M Banks are characterised by kaleidoscopic complexity, and his “real world” works often powered by extravagantly imaginative nastiness, it’s nonetheless clear that part of Iain Banks’ vast popularity is down to the breezy, everyday directness with which he’s able to communicate.

SINCE Monty Don returned to Gardeners’ World in 2011, it’s been the only television programme all sensible people take care, in season, never to miss. He is simply the most likeable of all presenters – even without the assistance of his adorable retriever, Nigel.

REBECCA Miller cut her literary teeth focusing on women’s lives, and some subversive women’s lives, too. Her short story collection, Personal Velocity, featured women on the run, women who had suffered long-term abuse, women who choose ambition over their marriage and so on.

EVERY Promise is a slow burner of a novel. I can imagine readers being irked and bored by the first pages, and giving up on the book.

ANYONE writing about Edmund Burke (1723-92) has to deal with the problem of his famous soubriquet, “the father of conservatism”.

ASK Americans who was the father of ornithology in their country and most will reply “John James Audubon”, the artist whose The Birds Of America is one of the most beautiful (and expensive) books in the world.

IN THE foreword to his thoroughly researched biography of one of Britain’s greatest bands, author Rob Jovanovic argues that, despite their lofty reputation, The Kinks remained curiously under-appreciated for much of their career.

IT WOULD be a very welcome side-effect of Lydia Davis winning the International Man Booker Prize if it persuaded readers in Britain to explore the other, more esoteric avenues of contemporary American writing.

‘A NOVEL was the rendering of an Affair: of one embroilment, one set of embarrassments, one human coil, one psychological progression,” Ford Madox Ford once wrote. Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, the story of a woman’s obsession with another family, fits Ford’s definition to a tee.

KURT Cobain loved the Bay City Rollers and entertained secret hopes of one day visiting Bellshill and Airdrie.