IN A windowless, strip-lit room hidden behind countless doors and up various corridors at Glasgow’s stately Kelvingrove Museum, 30 women (and two men) are talking about Jane Austen.

The roots of everything lie much further in the past than we think.

I’ve never noticed the difference an illustrator makes to a book as clearly as in Hodder’s new editions of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books.

BILL Clinton’s first Presidential campaign used the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” to remind his staff of what really mattered to voters.

HISTORICAL crime fiction is enjoying something of a golden moment, and with her often ingenious and unusual debut novel, Jenny Mayhew adds significantly to the genre.

ALLAN Massie, this paper’s chief fiction reviewer for more than 30 years, is a member of an endangered species.

IN EARLY June 1953, two exhausted, scruffy-looking men – the filmmaker Tom Stobart and the physiologist Griffith Pugh – were making their way slowly back to Kathmandu together after taking part in the monumental team effort that had led to the successful first ascent of Everest.

PATRICK McGrath, notoriously, grew up in Berkshire in the grounds of a mental hospital.

WHERE Albert Camus has been concerned, silence has been anything but golden: he’s been much castigated for the voiceless Arab characters of L’Étranger and La Peste.

WHEN Granta recently placed Jenni Fagan on their Best of Young British Novelists list, the magazine was confirming what many already knew: she is one of the bright young stars of the Scottish literary scene.

SOMETIMES the skill of being a writer lies in realising your material is right in front of your eyes.

JAMES Salter is known as one of America’s best short story writers, but in his long life – he is now in his eighties – he has written only some half-dozen novels.

Novelist Alexander McCall Smith has spoken out against the dark depiction of Scotland by his fellow Scottish writers.

AUTHOR Iain Banks has revealed he could undergo chemotherapy within weeks in an effort to prolong his life – but said he will stop the treatment if its side-effects are too debilitating.

Only 500 copies of the first edition of the first Harry Potter book were published, and a very special one is up for auction, crammed with notes and drawings by JK Rowling, writes Martyn McLaughlin

DEBUT author Jenni Fagan has been shortlisted alongside Salman Rushdie and Alan Warner for the UK’s oldest book awards, further propelling the Scottish writer towards her position as the nation’s brightest young literary star.

ONE of the first characters to appear in Inferno is a spiky-haired, malevolent biker chick dressed in black leather.

IF AN aged, once-eminent author, close to the end, ekes out one almost-­certainly-last­ novel, and it’s of an indifferent standard, or worse, should it be ­published out of respect for his or her more glorious past?

A PUNCH cartoon, two dukes at a party, one whispering into the other’s ear: “Don’t you think it must be just terrible being an earl?”

OVER the years, Melvyn Bragg’s writing has attracted a degree of (jealous?) teasing, but the dissenting voices compete with a louder chorus of praise in which he is favourably compared with DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.