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Funny old weather this weekend. I dressed for winter thinking I was going to face wind and rain for my visit to the Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival yesterday. It was indeed a cold wind, but in the sunshine it could have been the height of summer. There I was in a long thick coat walking alongside people in T-shirts! Then, coming out of my event with Sarah Winman, it was only seven o'clock but pitch black. Of course it is the middle of October this week.

I've been enjoying the autumn cluster of book festivals in Leiston, Mannington and Bury, where I've had the privilege of interviewing some fascinating writers. Sarah Winman yesterday was wonderful, talking about her career so far and giving teasers about her next novel. Due to be published next September it is a prequel to 'Still Life'. 

I'm back in Bury this evening, in conversation with novelist Megan Hunter. I will be reviewing her books in the coming weeks as I think she's an amazing talent. Do look her up, if you can. I was a bit wary of her writing after her debut 'The End We Start From' as there's a limit to how much dystopian fiction I can take on these days. But her subsequent books are brilliant and so different. The latest, 'Days of Light' takes the  Bloomsbury Group as inspiration.

Always rather fascinated by the lives of these artists and writers, this week I was in London to see a play about John Maynard Keynes.

He is always rather overlooked in accounts of Charleston and the lives of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant et al, yet he was very involved and this play, called 'The Standard of Living' and starring Rory Kinnear (though not for my visit, sadly), gave a completely different perspective.

Keynes was hugely influential as an economist, of course, but he also recognised the importance of the arts as essential for the public good. He founded the Arts Theatre in Cambridge, led the wartime Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, and became the founding chairman of the Arts Council in 1945. He collected modern French Post-Impressionist and Cubist paintings (including works by Cézanne and Picasso) and also bank-rolled the Bloomsbury artists and writers.

What an interesting man and an incredible life. The play itself is a little odd in parts, though well worth seeing. It's written by James Graham who wrote 'Dear England' and he is soon to have a play about John Major staged in London.

So, I'll sign off now, and wish you well for this coming week with just one more thing to mention... if you are thinking of coming to the Gyles Brandreth and haven't yet got a ticket, you'll need to be quick. There are only a handful remaining!

Thank you for reading. 

There have been various theories on why this is the case - the blockbuster movie 'The Odyssey' and 'Instapoetry' are two key factors, it's thought. But I've been particularly interested to learn from a number of sources that we may be turning to poetry to help us deal with our troubled world.

The 'Guardian's Culture Editor Charlotte Higgins wrote recently that 'poetry is the only language for these times of violence and chaos'.

Jacqueline Saphra agrees. She is a poet and trustee of the Poetry in Aldeburgh festival which takes place on 5-8 November. ‘I think people turn to poetry in times of trauma and trouble,' she told me for an article in next month's 'Suffolk' magazine. 

'We're living in very difficult times and people need consolation. They turn to reading and writing poetry as a way of trying to express how they feel about the world.’

And I stumbled across a quote from the poet Pascale Petit this weekend. She says: 'Literature is important because it can transform the pain of life into beauty. I don't think it should hide the pain, but it has this magical ability to transform.'

I wonder what poems and poets we'll be introduced to on National Poetry Day and what consolation and comfort they might bring?

Thank you for reading. 

It's been a busy week, packed with interviews - I've spoken to a classicist, a composer, an actor, a broadcaster and a man obsessed with gulls. Almost all of them have written books, even if that wasn't the reason I was speaking to them, so I'll be telling you more about our conversations in the coming weeks.

My workload over the past few days has meant that my own reading for pleasure has been curtailed. It never completely drops off because I'm not entirely 'myself' unless I'm lost in a good book.

Some people still need convincing of the value of reading though.

In Singapore, the government is paying people to read for at least 15 minutes a day. Their aim is to halt social media habits, and they have used financial rewards in other interventions in the past. 

Commentators say that this 'gamified' approach - where a short-term reward mimicks the immediate dopamine hit of scrolling - is likely to be more beneficial than the actual financial gain (which is rather modest). And the 'manageable 15-minute daily goal, built around existing routines ... with tracking to keep progress visible' may make it a success.

Building positive habits is key to the 'secrets' revealed in Gyles Brandreth's new book about having a healthier, happier life, and he highlights research on reading in 'The 7 Secrets to the Hundred-Year Life'.

Just 30 minutes reading a day can add nearly two years to your life, he says. 'It strengthens 'executive function and memory' allowing us 'to cope with stress and problem-solve effectively and efficiently'. Come along to the event in November to find out more!

I wonder how the Booker judges were rewarded for their reading commitment this year. Of the 163 books they read in six months, we'll find out their favoured six titles on Tuesday evening. You can watch the announcement live online here. And we'll see whether our Booker Book Group prediction for this year's shortlist was in tune with the judges.

Thank you for reading. 

Recently I read 'All in a Don's Day' by the acclaimed classicist, and this year's chair of the Booker Prize judges, Mary Beard.

She referred to W. Somerset Maugham as saying: the best way to treat the 'Book of the Moment' is not to read it for three or four years - it's amazing how many 'must reads' turn out to be 'don't bothers'.

I can't actually find that quote, but hope that the Longlist of novels presented in this year's Booker Prize will all stand the test of time. Our discussion in our Booker Book Group Challenge on Monday evening led to a number of the books being given short shrift. 

You can take a look at my report of our discussion here.

The Booker judges' Shortlist will be revealed on Tuesday 22 September at 7pm and you can attend the event at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre. The judges will be there to say something about how they came to their decisions – chair Mary Beard and fellow panellists Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood will be in conversation with Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood. The event is also being livestreamed on the Southbank Centre’s website.

Will there be any surprises this year? 

When Anita Brookner won the Booker Prize in 1984 with 'Hotel du Lac', it was considered ‘an unexpected choice’ with criticism in the press and supposedly 'widespread disappointment’ among booksellers. The chair of the judges then, Richard Cobb, had said they wanted to choose books in their list that would ‘appeal to the general public’. 'Hotel du Lac' has continued to sell well in the subsequent 40 years since it was first recognised. We will be finding out more about Anita Brookner's life, career and books in the visit by her biographer Hermione Lee in November (tickets now on sale - scroll down for details).

Which of the 2026 Booker Prize titles will have the widest appeal, I wonder. 

Thank you for reading. 

Tomorrow evening is our much anticipated Booker Book Group 2026!

For a number of years now, we've each read a book from the Longlist and shared our response with the group, creating our own Shortlist and potential overall winner from our discussion.

This year we've had more people sign up than ever before and, arguably, it's been a very readable Longlist. We'll see just how readable when we meet tomorrow night. If you'd like to join in the meeting, to listen in to the reviews, you'd be very welcome, just let me know before 12 noon tomorrow and I'll send you the details.

And I'll endeavour to compile a report on the discussion for next week's newsletter. Then we'll wait with great anticipation for the official Booker Judges' Shortlist, revealed on 23 September.

This is another date for my diary which is filling up again now that the summer has ended and a new term has begun. Lots of festivals coming up which I'll be highlighting week by week, but I'm also pleased to announce two author events which I've just had confirmed for Woodbridge. 

And one of these is pleasingly appropriate for our Booker theme.

On Monday 23 November, at 2pm, the acclaimed biographer Hermione Lee will be with us at Woodbridge Library to talk about her new book, looking at the Art and Life of novelist Anita Brookner, winner of the Booker Prize in 1984.

The favourites to win the prize that year were JG Ballard and Julian Barnes, but Anita Brookner triumphed with 'Hotel du Lac'.

It's many years since I last read that, or any of Brookner's other novels. In fact I was surprised to see how many I have on my bookshelf still. It has always felt a significant book for me, though in 1984 I wouldn't have been an obvious demographic to appreciate her characters, plots or style of writing. But I loved her work and I'm very excited to read Hermione's biography and to find out something about the process of pulling together this account of a woman who really didn't want to be known. Scroll down for more details about this event - and take a look at who's coming to The Riverside, too... 

Thank you for reading.