‘You’re doing what?’
‘I’m writing a series of novels set in all of the historic counties of England.’
‘That’s what I thought you said. Just remind me – how many historic counties are there?’ Read more…
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate it. Here at 4th Estate, we aren’t partaking in any festivities just yet (it’s only 11am) but we’re watching the clock. Here for you are three and a half of our favourite quotes from our Irish authors. Ian Sansom only counts as half because he lives in Ireland, you see. Read more…
We have a brand new series on the blog this year – we’re calling it ‘Write Here’. The series will take us into our authors’ writing spaces across the globe, where they’ll tell us about how they go about their craft; we’ll mark each location on the map at the bottom of each post. To start us off, we travel to Belfast, Ireland, where Ian Sansom writes the County Guides books…
This Christmas we’ve decided to make your present buying a lot less stressful by asking the 4th Estate team to hand-pick books for all your relatives. Hopefully this will mean less umming and ahhing in the bookshop, and more oohing and ahhing on Christmas Day… Read more…
We’ve been clearing out our offices and archiving the most interesting of items in preparation for our move to London Bridge in January. Over the next month or so we’ll be sharing anything of GREAT interest that we find with you. To start with, we flick through a satisfyingly large magazine we published to celebrate our 21st…
Back in 2005, the word ‘kindle’ was principally a verb, the word ‘Amazon’ was generally synonymous with a rainforest, and Hilary Mantel’s mantelpiece was conspicuously lacking in Booker Prizes. Here at 4th Estate, we were busy publishing future classics like Mantel’s Beyond Black, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory and Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries. Read more…
On an endless-seeming train journey, as dusk falls and the amber lights of the passing stations recede into the gloom, there’s no better way to stave off night-time’s creeping chill than with a classic Christie or Conan Doyle. But while many readers take pleasure in attempting to solve their mysteries, I cannot claim to be one of them.
To make up for a missed post last week, today we err from the trodden path of five best internet things and bring you the six articles, videos and ideas that we’ve been sharing and discussing this week. We hope you enjoy sharing them too. Read more…
Yes, yes – we know 4th Estate is renowned for its incisive works of fiction (anyone heard of Hilary Mantel?) and hard-hitting non-fiction (Ben Goldacre, Naomi Klein and Nick Cohen, amongst others). But we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and can (on occasion, mind you) have a laugh. Join in the fun and feast on these quirky Christmas picks.