![Chris Cleave: Across the divide Chris Cleave: Across the divide](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Chris_Cleave_slider-290x290.jpg)
Chris Cleave: Across the divide
Chris Cleave’s latest novel, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, is a London-set examination of the real impact of the Second World War, centring on an 18-year-old schoolteacher called Mary North. Cleave and I have tea one afternoon in Piccadilly to discuss it. There’s a reason why we’re drinking tea and not, say, vermouth. Cleave doesn’t drink....
![Waves of joy and doubt Waves of joy and doubt](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Astrid_Lindgren_slider-290x289.jpg)
Waves of joy and doubt
During the Second World War Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking, was an aspiring writer living in Stockholm with her family, working in a top secret job at the Swedish Mail Censorship Office. Horrified and fascinated as world events unfolded, she kept a meticulous diary full of newspaper clippings (and occasional snippets from the letters...
![Read my lips: Pol-talk Read my lips: Pol-talk](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How_Good_Is_Your_Grammar_slider-290x290.jpg)
Read my lips: Pol-talk
When new-dealer Franklin D. Roosevelt told the American people, in a radio broadcast, “I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues”, it wasn’t because Mr President couldn’t have come up with something more – let’s say – ‘presidential’. He wanted to be homely, to get down with the...