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.

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.

The Italian ‘dream place’ and its famous hotel popularised by John Steinbeck 60 years ago still casts its spell over celebrity and 
non-celebrity guests alike, writes Stephen McGinty

If there was a prize for poem titles, Chrissy Williams’ collection Flying Into the Bear (HappenStance, £4) would surely win it.

Jay Griffiths’ last book was called Wild. It was an extraordinary, freewheeling, and ecstatic roam across the planet in search of wilderness and the people and creatures that inhabit it.

Eighteen thirty-two used to be a well-known date in British history. It was the year of the Great Reform Bill, when an outdated political system gave way to a wider franchise allowing a number of middle-class men to vote for the first time. Antonia Fraser’s latest book is a spirited attempt to bring the controversy and passion of the era to a new audience.

SILA’S FORTUNE