Exciting news. I've started a small press called CONDUIT BOOKS, publishing literary fiction and memoir, focussing (initially) on male authors. Submissions open 1st-31st May. Do please send work to the Conduit Books website. Read the Bookseller piece here

Latest Substack: I wrote about seeing a double-bill of Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun at the Aylesbury Odeon as a nine-year-old... And then rereading all the Ian Fleming Bond books again forty years later, with some unexpected results. Read A Cup of Mud for free here

Xiaolu Guo's remarkable feminist reimagining of Moby-Dick is, among other things, a rollicking adventure novel. Here's my review of Call Me Ishmaelle in the Literary Review

And we have a winner! Congratulations to Gäelle Béllem & Bullaun Press for winning the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize with the outstanding tragi-comic tour-de-force There's A Monster Behind the Door. Read the Guardian coverage here

Thanks to my fellow judges Alice Jolly & Houman Barekat. Also thanks to Neil Griffiths of Weatherglass Books for hosting the winner's announcement event at Foyles on April 1st, and for founding this unique prize for small presses a decade ago.