The public has chosen Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of A Yellow Sun the best winner of 25 years of Women’s Prize for Fiction. This book is a magnificent read, a beautiful love story against the backdrop of the Biafran war, a terrible conflict I vividly remember from my childhood as totally incomprehensible…until I read this book. A truly amazing novel.

Read our review of Americanah, also by Adichie.

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Just in time for the second UK lockdown comes a local bookshop saviour. Bookshop.org, an American online bookseller has launched in the UK as bookshops have to close again. Here’s how it works: find the local bookshops in your area (or anywhere else, for that matter) by entering your postcode, choose a store from the list of member bookshops and you will be directed to their website, order to your heart’s content and support your local high street and the lovely people who work there. Bye, bye Jeff!

Couldn’t be happier to see that Maggie O’Farrell has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for the unmissable Hamnet. If you read one book this year, let this be it! Here’s our review. She beat Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and The Light, Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Jenny Offill’s Weather, Angie Cruz’s Dominicana and Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships. Congratulations, Maggie O’Farrell!