All posts tagged: author

Remembering Len Deighton: The Ipcress File author reveals how he wrote a best-seller

Remembering Len Deighton: The Ipcress File author reveals how he wrote a best-seller

Published by Daniella Wilson

Today, it was announced that British author Len Deighton has sadly passed away at the age of 97. Deighton was best known for his spy novels including The Ipcress File (1962), which was turned into a Bafta-winning film starring Michael Caine, before being remade as an ITV series in 2022 in which Peaky Blinders’ Joe Cole played the leading role. In this piece from the Radio Times archive, Deighton explains the writing process behind his 1987 novel SS-GB, which imagines a Nazi-occupied Britain. The novel was given the TV treatment by the BBC in 2017 in an adaptation starring Sam Riley and Kate Bosworth. Sometimes the trigger for a book comes all at once. That’s how it was for SS-GB. “No one knows what would have happened after 1940 if we had lost the war,” said my editor. It was about ten o’clock at night and we were sitting drinking (nothing stronger than coffee), talking about the research I’d carried out for my history books Fighter and Blitzkrieg. “To some extent, we do know,” I …

Len Deighton death: Bestselling spy thriller author, who also taught men how to cook, dies aged 97

Len Deighton death: Bestselling spy thriller author, who also taught men how to cook, dies aged 97

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Len Deighton, a prolific writer whose tough, stylish spy thrillers featured on bestseller lists for decades, has died. He was 97. Deighton’s literary agent, Tim Bates, said he died on Sunday. No cause of death was given. Deighton’s first novel, The Ipcress File, helped set the tone of cool and gritty 1960s thrillers and was made into a Bafta-winning film starring Michael Caine that helped launch long and stellar careers for both author and actor. It was then remade as an ITV series starring Peaky Blinders actor Joe Cole in 2022. “Len was a Titan,” Bates said on Tuesday. “He was not only one of the greatest spy and thriller writers of the 20th century but also one of our greatest writers in any genre.” Born to a working-class family in a wealthy part of London in 1929 – his father …

How to Read Books That Challenge Your Mind: Advice from Robert Greene, Author of The 48 Laws of Power

How to Read Books That Challenge Your Mind: Advice from Robert Greene, Author of The 48 Laws of Power

Published by José Betancourt

If you’ve fall­en out of the habit of read­ing books, you’re cer­tain­ly not alone. Con­sid­er how often posts cir­cu­late on social media (itself a big part of the prob­lem) about stud­ies show­ing a rapid increase in the num­ber of peo­ple who don’t even get one book read per year. How best to get back on the lit­er­ary wag­on? You might try going straight for the hard stuff, as it were, by tak­ing on a nov­el like Moby-Dick. But that, accord­ing to the view artic­u­lat­ed in the video above by The 48 Laws of Pow­er author Robert Greene, would be like step­ping back into the gym after years away and try­ing to bench press 300 pounds. Rather than start­ing with Melville’s mas­ter­piece, build your way up to it — but once you get to it, you’ve got to fin­ish it. “You want to train your­self to fin­ish books, and not con­stant­ly be going from one to anoth­er to anoth­er,” Greene says, and that holds even for those you may not enjoy. “When I read a book that I …

Meghan Markle’s ‘furious’ response to royal author who ‘crossed the line’

Meghan Markle’s ‘furious’ response to royal author who ‘crossed the line’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have responded to comments made in an upcoming royal book about the late Queen Elizabeth II and her relationship with the former Suits actress before her death in 2022.  In the new book, Betrayal: Power, Deceit And The Fight For The Future Of The Royal Family, a claim was made that the late Queen once revealed to a friend the Duchess of Sussex had “brainwashed” her husband.  The author, Tom Bower, was criticised by the famous couple for his “fixation” on them and their relationship with the royal family.  Further pages of the novel, which is out now, claim the Prince and Princess of Wales also considered Meghan “a threat” as tensions escalated before the Sussexes decided to leave Britain for a life in Montecito, California, with their young family.  In a statement issued on Saturday, 14 March, a spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan rebutted the author’s suggestions and said he “crossed the line”.  “Mr Bower’s commentary has long crossed the line from criticism into fixation,” the statement read. …

The Latest Author Protest Against AI

The Latest Author Protest Against AI

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Authors Publish Empty Book in Protest of AI As the UK prepares to assess the cost of proposed changes to copyright law next week, 10,000 writers have collaborated to publish a book protesting the unauthorized use of their work to feed AI models. The brainchild of composer and activist Ed Newton-Rex, Don’t Steal This Book is empty except for a list of the participating authors’ names. Advocates will be distributing 1,000 copies during this week’s London Book Fair to generate awareness and pressure officials to “protect the UK’s creatives, and refuse to legalise the theft of creative work by AI companies.” May their efforts succeed. The Remarkably Bright Creatures Trailer is Here Making an octopus the narrator of your novel is either genius or terrible, and it’s an even trickier proposition for a movie. More than a million …

Woman sues The Tell author sued by woman claiming she stole her stories of sexual abuse for best-seller

Woman sues The Tell author sued by woman claiming she stole her stories of sexual abuse for best-seller

Published by Daniella Wilson

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US A woman has sued author and venture capitalist Amy Griffin over her bestselling 2025 memoir The Tell. She claims that Griffin’s descriptions of childhood sexual abuse in the book were stolen from her experience. The plaintiff identifies herself only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. An attorney for Griffin called the suit “absurd” and “meritless.” In The Tell, published a year ago, Griffin writes that undergoing therapy using the psychedelic drug MDMA uncovered previously buried childhood memories of being sexually abused by a teacher at her middle school in Amarillo, Texas, in the 1980s. “I knew that these memories were real,” Griffin writes in the book. “My body knew what had happened to me.” open image in gallery The Tell was published a year ago – and became an Oprah Book Club …

Beth Moore to end Living Proof events in 2027

Beth Moore to end Living Proof events in 2027

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Bible teacher and bestselling author Beth Moore announced Thursday (March 5) that her ministry will stop holding large-scale Living Proof events in 2027. The decision to end Living Proof Ministries events, which feature Moore’s Bible teaching and worship music, will coincide with her 70th birthday. She plans to continue speaking and writing but will no longer host events. “Though it may sound like retirement, unless the Lord wills it, it’s meant to actually delay retirement, making the best use of my remaining energies in the last chapter of ministry,” Moore, the founder of Living Proof Ministries in Houston, said in a video announcement. For decades, Moore taught at stadiums and megachurches and sold millions of Bible studies and books, in a remarkable career that started when she began teaching a Bible study at a church in Houston. One of her studies, “A Woman’s Heart: God’s Dwelling Place,” wound up in the hands of an editor at Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Convention publishing arm, which led to a publishing deal that lasted for decades and …

The Author of THE GIVER Has a New Dystopian Book Out in 2026

The Author of THE GIVER Has a New Dystopian Book Out in 2026

Published by Jenni Sidey

Check Out These Recent SFF Awards and Honors At the 57th NAACP Image Awards in February, Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author won the Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work: Fiction, and Angie Thomas’s Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Book of Anansi won the Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work: Youth/Teens. Swords and Spaceships Sign up to Swords and Spaceships to receive news and recommendations from the world of science fiction and fantasy. Subscribe to Selected No Thanks And speaking of Nnedi Okorafor, she was just announced as a Guest of Honor at the Locus awards on May 30, 2026, along with Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones. And the 2025 Aurealis Award winners were also announced. They are given for the best Australian speculative fiction, and included Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods and Cinder House by Freya Marske. A New Novel from Micaiah Johnson is on the Way! We are big fans of The Space Between Worlds and Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson here at Book Riot, so the news of …

Hollywood still undervalues Latinas. “Real Women Have Curves” author gives them the spotlight

Hollywood still undervalues Latinas. “Real Women Have Curves” author gives them the spotlight

Published by Sam Flores

LIFE Film Festival (Latina Independent Film Extravaganza) returns to Los Angeles this week for its 13th year. Founded by “Real Women Have Curves” playwright Josefina López, the festival will screen over 60 short films and four feature movies at Casa 0101 in Boyle Heights, and for the first time at Cinépolis in Pico Rivera. From Thursday to Sunday, LIFE Film Festival will offer a series of workshops and networking opportunities where aspiring filmmakers will have a chance to learn from Latinas in Hollywood, like Emmy Award-winning editor Michelle Tesoro, who worked on Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” and the 2023 film “Maestro.” Since López founded LIFE Film Festival in 2013, her commitment remains the same: to celebrate Latino stories in cinema and empower the next generation of Latina filmmakers. As a Chicana screenwriter and producer for over 30 years, López knows firsthand the underrepresentation of Latinos in Hollywood films. “Latinos are the majority here in California, and we’re still rendered invisible, even though the industry is right in our backyard,” López said. “They just really don’t …