I was lucky enough to corner Michael Grant - author of the GONE series and now BZRK - for an interview. A fascinating guy and a great storyteller...Enjoy.

I'd happily burn all of Thackeray. It's simply not funny or especially revelatory.

Many of us will have read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies at some point. And no doubt the savage, anarchic tale will stay with some for the rest...

"Form is temporary. Class is permanent." This phrase, heard most often in my life in a cricketing context, came to mind today as I was helping to judge the BMS Seasonal Book Marketing Awards (a much more modest event than yesterday's Costa Book Awards, won by Andrew Miller's novel Pure).

What was it about Tolstoy that made Norman Mailer tick? What novels inspired Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood to write the way they do? "If you were stranded on a desert island with only one book to read, which would it be?"