Don Paterson

Poet, writer and musician whose collections include Landing Light, which won the TS Eliot Prize and Whitbread Award in 2003, and Orpheus

We often see this with readers who believe poets have hidden messages in their poems. This is the kind of reader who has been taught - often in school - that meaning is something that poets deliberately and sadistically withhold, and that what we have to do to the poem is ... batter a confession out of it.

Preetam Kaushik

Freelance journalist

If we study the Gatsby phenomenon in detail, we would realise that every society has its Jay. But the factors that produce a Gatsby can be amazingly different. For instance, in the case of India it was not war, but economic reforms which gave birth to this culture. Here I shall discuss the strange case of three Indian tycoons who had shades of Jay, and like him met violent deaths.

Jason Holmes

London-based writer

'No political or cultural figurehead has ever come up with the phrase "a British dream", so Mod appeals to me politically because it's the closest we've ever come to having an American Dream.' So says Richard Weight, author of Mod: A Very British Style.

Endeavour Press

London-based digital publisher

WANT to see what cabin crew look like out of uniform? Go to your local cinema to see Pedro Almodovar's I'm So Excited. When I went in London at least three quarters of the audience was clearly crew. Leggy girls with deep tans and their hair down? Crew. Buff guys with tight t-shirts and very short hair? Crew.

Paul Tweed

Senior Partner, Johnsons Solicitors

The decision by the UK publishers not to distribute Amanda Knox's autobiography has been interpreted in some media circles as being another example of the detrimental impact of our so called draconian libel laws. In reality, the publisher's decision is more likely to have been based on an understandable concern not to expose themselves to potential contempt of Court as well as libel consequences, pending the outcome of the forthcoming re-trial in Italy.