The Duke of Edinburgh's impressionist painting of his wife, kept in his private collection since 1965, will be included in a book to be published on Monday

She has been painted by just about every famous artist from Annigonni to Lucian Freud, but perhaps never quite like this. The portrait of the Queen at breakfast in 1965 was painted by one of the few artists who knows what she looks like at that time of day: the Duke of Edinburgh.

The distinctly impressionist work, painted at Windsor Castle, at least gives the lie to the notion that she does not pay any attention to what is in the press: it shows her reading the morning papers, although it is hard to tell whether she has turned to the racing pages. The table has some indeterminate objects on it – surely that cannot be a knife sticking out of a jam pot?

The painting, until now kept in the duke's private collection, is included for the first time in a new book, to published on Monday, called The Royal Portrait: Image and Impact.

Included among other unusual pictures in the collection is one entitled Missis Kwin, by a Papua New Guinean artist called Mathias Kauage, showing the Queen as a tribal chief, with face paint, feathers, tattoos and pig tusk ornaments.

The book also includes a very early photograph of Queen Victoria, surrounded by her children, taken in 1852, which has her face smudged out. She was apparently not amused to be snapped with her eyes closed and rubbed out her face on the daguerreotype with her finger.

• The Queen
• Monarchy
• Art

Stephen Bates
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I trust you've been following to some extent the Jonathan Franzen-New York Times-chick lit debate. If not, it is summed up well here, in this Slate piece in which the authors counted up every piece of adult fiction reviewed in the NYT over the last two years and found that men get reviewed about twice as often as women.

Of course the book-reviewing trade discriminates against women. Why should it be any different from anything else? I say that derisively, you understand, not with approval.

I've never read Jodi Picoult or Jennifer Wiener, the two "chick-lit" authors who kicked this off (and by the way, as literary feuds of the past go, this one ranks way way down the list). I have nothing bad to say about Franzen. I haven't read the new book but think I will. I did buy Gary Sheyngart's new one, also being beatified right now, and it's not really up my alley, although I see that he is immensely talented, and I wish him every success.

I'm a believer in lessening the distinction between serious and unserious writing, or music or anything. Shakespeare wrote things for money. Mozart wrote music he thought his paymasters would enjoy. Dickens? Please. He wrote magazine serials, placing his craft in the distinctly anti-aesthetic service of pumping up circulation. And I see nothing wrong with caring about how well one's product might sell. Another way of saying that: how many lives and hearts it might touch.

The image of the lonely creative genius in his (no; her!) garret, caring not about recompense and wanting only to share with the world what is in his (no, dammit; her!) heart is the image to which we all pay the greatest obeisance. And maybe on balance that does make for the greatest art. But if a writer or painter or musician happens to have a commercial touch in addition to being able to make art, that's certainly nothing to hold against anybody. The more I read about the matter, the more I conclude that most yes most of history's creative geniuses were indeed trying to be commercial, in many cases trying very hard. And bravo for them. Or brava.

Where is the art-commerce line? Discuss.

• United States
• Fiction

Michael Tomasky
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In this week's podcast we take a look at the new publishing season and open the betting on who this year's Christmas bestsellers will be: with Stephen Fry, Michael Caine, Michael McIntyre and Cheryl Cole all heading for the bookshops, the celebrity stakes are wide open.

We also look at the making of a publishing phenomenon with the editor behind Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, which has been gobbling up column inches in print and online with weeks still to go before publication. Plus Jonathan Freedland interviews the great Israeli novelist David Grossman.

Reading list

To the End of the Land by David Grossman (Cape)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate)
Nourishment by Gerard Woodward (Picador)
Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman (|Sceptre)

Claire ArmitsteadJonathan Freedland

Greg Downing imprisoned after writing about imagined attack on children's author he had been forbidden to contact

A stalker was jailed today after writing a blog about raping and murdering a woman he had been harassing in real life for two years.

Greg Downing, 40, detailed the imagined attack on children's author Katharine Quarmby in an online novel.

He bombarded Quarmby, of north London, with phone calls and emails after meeting her in 2008, Blackfriars crown court heard.

He was convicted of stalking her on three separate occasions before she found the blog by searching for her name through Google.

The 29-page blog entry, entitled A Novel: Katharine Quarmby, is about a man stalking the writer, burgling her home, raping and finally murdering her.

Judge Deva Pillay sentenced Downing of Crowborough, East Sussex, to six months in jail.

He said: "It is clear that your harassment of Miss Quarmby has been deliberate and premeditated so as to cause her and her family the maximum discomfort, embarrassment and fear."

Prosecutor Peter Gray said the pair met in 2008 using the Guardian's online dating service.

After four weeks, Quarmby, a mother-of-two, ended the relationship.

"Mr Downing seems to have wanted to continue contact and continue the relationship, much against the wishes of Ms Quarmby," said Gray.

Quarmby reported Downing to the police after he plagued her with text messages, calls and emails.

In summer 2008, magistrates gave him a conditional discharge and placed a restraining order on him, preventing him from contacting Quarmby or going to her address.

But the harassment continued with further phone calls, the court heard.

Downing was called back to court and given another community order in January last year.

In January this year, he appeared in court again after breaching his order by contacting Quarmby.

Shortly after that court appearance, Quarmby discovered the blog.

In a witness statement read out to the court, she said: "This seems like a fantasy or story which includes harassment, burglary of my home, rape and then finally murder.

"I am entirely worried about my personal safety and also my children's safety. I feel as though I am a prisoner in my own home, despite help from the police, I still feel at risk. The threats made were of a very serious nature."

Downing was sentenced today for "putting a person in fear of violence" after he pleaded guilty to the offence earlier this year.

• Crime
• Online dating
• Children and teenagers

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By invoking the deity, the eminent scientist has discovered the formula for creating a popular success from abstruse science

Hold onto your mitres, folks: Stephen Hawking is back in the news, with the revelation that science has proved the universe can do without God (or something like that). This theologico-physical bombshell has landed him on the Times's front page (I'd link to it, but, you know ...), a slot on both the News at 10 and Channel 4 and – according to the Daily Mail – has already provoked a retaliatory jihad from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Could it be that he's got a book out?

Ah yes. That'll be The Grand Design, a "controversial new theory on the origins of the universe, from the world's most famous living scientist", out next week. The publicity department at Bantam must be breaking out the champagne, and with a surge in pre-orders on Amazon since the media storm broke, their colleagues in sales won't be far behind. But what is it about the Lucasian professor of mathematics that makes him such a publishing phenomenon?

It's not just his undoubted brilliance, his rolling prose style, or his compelling back story – though the contrast between his wheelchair-bound physical existence and an intellectual life which ranges across the universe lends something of an emotional charge to pronouncements about far-flung corners of the cosmos. No, in Hawking's case, it's the G-word.

Cast you mind back to Hawking's bestselling A Brief History of Time - his Old Testament, if you will. This whistlestop tour of relativity, Big Bang theory and black holes went on to sell more than 9m copies – though how many of those copies made the transition from being bought to being read is another question. With only one equation, lots of excellent diagrams and the pleasingly brain-scrambling concept of "imaginary time", it was undoubtedly well put together. But the reason why Hawking ended up in a totally different galaxy, sales-wise, from colleagues such as Frank Close or Paul Davies who published similar books at around the same time, was his willingness to talk about God. He famously closed the book with the ringing declaration that "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of reason – for then we should know the mind of God."

Now he's at it again, suggesting that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing ... It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." I don't want to quibble with Professor Hawking's interpretation of M-theory, but if he's right then it can hardly be described as a theory of everything. You may not need God to create a universe, but a little religion goes a long way in creating a bestseller.

• Publishing
• Science and nature
• Stephen Hawking

Richard Lea
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For the second year running, the bestselling author's books are the most-donated to the charity shop chain

Dan Brown has hung on to the dubious honour of being the author whose books readers most want to get rid of, topping the list of writers most-donated to Oxfam shops for the second year running.

The bestselling American author, whose latest cryptographic thriller The Lost Symbol – filled with such gems as "Is there life after death? Do humans have souls? Incredibly, Katherine had answered all of these questions and more" – was published last autumn, is joined on Oxfam's most-donated line-up by the likes of John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell and Alexander McCall Smith.

The rants of Jeremy Clarkson, meanwhile, have made the Top Gear presenter the first non-fiction writer to enter the charity's top 10 of authors most likely to be donated to its 686 shops: either his readers are notably generous, or unwilling to keep his titles on their shelves once read.

"Although we do have books given to us which people have had on their shelves for years – classic literature and collectible items – we also have books which are very current," said Sarah Farquhar, Oxfam's head of retail operations. "Jeremy Clarkson is someone people want to read about – he's one of those love/hate figures. When people read him they pass him on – books don't depreciate in value because they've been read."

Ian Rankin crept into the most-donated list just behind Brown, but the Scottish crime novelist is unlikely to be too downcast by his readers' propensity to give his books away: his novels about the exploits of detective John Rebus have also made him the charity's bestselling author for the second year in a row, followed by new entries Stieg Larsson and JK Rowling.

"It's great to be Oxfam's most purchased author for the second year in a row - and I'm really pleased that readers are donating my books to Oxfam, too," said Rankin. "The terrible scenes from Pakistan and wmoest Africa on our TV screens at the moment make it clear how vital the work of organisations such as Oxfam is, and I'm really glad that my books are going some way to help with this."

But Farquhar said that although book sales at the charity were up by around 6% this summer compared with last, the quantity of books being donated to shops had fallen by around 15% over the same period.

"We are struggling with donations. Generally we do find in times of austerity that people don't have quite so much to give," she said. "It's our biggest problem. We're not struggling for people to sell to, but shops are saying they could do with more product. We are consistently hearing that the volume of books donated is down."

Pointing to the fact that the average selling price for a book in an Oxfam shop is £1.60 – the sale of four books would be enough to provide six health check-ups in India – Farquhar urged people to keep on giving. "We need to encourage people to continue to donate to us," she said. "We really value their donations."

Oxfam is the third-biggest bookseller in the UK, and Europe's biggest high street retailer of second-hand books.

The most donated authors to Oxfam shops are (with last year's position in brackets):

1. Dan Brown (1)

2. Ian Rankin (3)

3. Patricia Cornwell (9)

4. Alexander McCall Smith (New entry)

5. John Grisham (2)

6. Danielle Steel (4)

7. JK Rowling (7)

8. Jeremy Clarkson (New entry)

9. Maeve Binchy (New entry)

10. Bill Bryson (New entry)

The Oxfam shop bestseller list (with last year's position in brackets):

1. Ian Rankin (1)

2. Stieg Larsson (New entry)

3. JK Rowling (New entry)

4. Stephenie Meyer (4)

5. John Grisham (New entry)

6. Patricia Cornwell (New entry)

7. James Patterson (9)

8. Terry Pratchett (5)

9. Kate Atkinson (New entry)

10. Dan Brown (2)

• Dan Brown
• Ian Rankin

Alison Flood
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Giles Andreae wins the Booktrust Early Years award with Emma Dodd for I Love My Mummy

His latest creation is a long way from Purple Ronnie, but the creator of that ubiquitous stickman, Giles Andreae, has been named winner of an award for the best book for babies.

As well as churning out endless rhymes for adults as Purple Ronnie (sample: "This poem says I love you/And you make my life complete/Except for all your bottom burps/And your stinky feet") Andreae is also a prolific children's author, and his book I Love My Mummy has seen off competition from writers including Rod Campbell and Fiona Watt to take the Booktrust Early Years award for babies under one.

Illustrated by Emma Dodd, the book is about the love between mother and child. "I love my mummy very much. She's great to cuddle, soft to touch," writes Andreae, who has previously won the Red House Best Picture Book award twice for his children's titles, which have sold more than 2m copies to date.

His Early Years win was announced last night at a ceremony at Bafta, where Chris Wormell's One Smart Fish, in which a fish wants to learn to walk, took the best picture book award for children up to five, and Levi Pinfold's The Django, about a jazz musician's imaginary childhood friend, won the best emerging illustrator prize for children up to five.

The winners were each presented with cheques for £2,000, and praised by children's literature expert and chair of judges Wendy Cooling for "invit[ing] children to laugh, share, think and wonder". She said the winning books "represent the diversity to be found in children's books, with texts that are perfect for sharing and a range of illustrative styles that is something to celebrate. Pictures and words complement each other beautifully in all three books and offer young children a very memorable reading experience," said Cooling.

Judge and broadcaster Kirsty Gallacher agreed. "It was quite a task to choose a winning book from each shortlist as they were all gorgeous in their own way," she said, adding that she had asked for advice from her "own expert panel of judges" – her children Oscar and Jude – to help her decide on the eventual winners.

• Children and teenagers

Alison Flood
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Former prime minister claims in memoir that U2 frontman could have ended up in No 10 if he hadn't chosen pop over politics

In a memoir filled with profound navel-gazing, political bombshells and a few purple-prose love scenes, Tony Blair has also found time to salute U2's activist frontman, claiming he "could be ... prime minister".

Blair's new book, A Journey, is the hottest thing in bookshops this week. It captures the government equivalent of band in-fighting – Brown and Blair like the Gallagher brothers – and even Blair's struggle with alcohol. But it's also got a tiny bit of real rock stardom, particularly in a passage on Bono.

On page 555 (via Spinner), Blair praises Bono as pop's answer to Barack Obama – someone who could cross party lines and get things done. "I knew he would work with George [W Bush] well, and with none of the prissy disdain of most of his ilk," Blair writes. "[Bono] could have been a president or prime minister standing on his head. He had an absolutely natural gift for politicking, was great with people, very smart and an inspirational speaker ... [He was] motivated by an abundant desire to keep on improving, never really content or relaxed.

Although he doesn't name his favourite U2 album, Blair does recall anti-Thatcher concerts by Red Wedge in the late 80s. "There was a group of musicians ... fronted by people like Paul Weller and Billy Bragg, who came out and campaigned for us," he writes. "It was great. But I remember saying after one of their gigs ... 'We need to reach the people listening to Duran Duran and Madonna.' ... [The idea] went down like a cup of sick."

Celebrities, Blair explains, "can reinforce, even boost [a political] message ... What they can't do, of course, is substitute for the politics ... but properly used, they help. And frankly, given the difficulty in rousing the damn thing, [Labour] needed the help." Perhaps U2 could write a new soundtrack for Blair's audiobook.

• Bono
• U2
• Pop and rock
• Tony Blair

Sean Michaels
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I have very limited tolerance for malady memoirs, but Frigyes Karinthy's astonishing account of his own brain tumour almost cured me of my aversion

Publishers love to flog fads to death. Consider the recent mania for "misery memoirs", which (mercifully) appears to have peaked. No more tales of anal rape and dog-food breakfasts for you, naughty reader! Before that there were all those tedious books about how the humble catheter/salted peanut/yo-yo transformed our understanding of the cosmos forever. And back in the late 1990s, there was Sick Lit.

Remember Sick Lit? Leader of the pack was Iris (1998), John Bayley's memoir of his wife Iris Murdoch's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Then there was C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (1998), columnist John Diamond's account of his throat cancer. Bryan Aldiss also had a stab with his When the Feast was Finished (1999) the story of his wife Margaret's decline and death from pancreatic cancer. And there were many others.

Evidently, reflections on bodily decay and death were much in demand as the new millennium approached. Not by me, however: I had a strong stomach for accounts of misery, repression, torture etc, but always steered clear of Sick Lit. The reason is obvious: distance. While I considered myself an unlikely candidate for death in a Rwandan-style genocide, I was acutely aware that I might one day develop cancer or a rotting brain, and as I was a young lad I didn't want to get into it, thank you very much. My assumption was (and is) that these books appealed mainly to those who had experienced the loss of a loved one, or were ill themselves. And voyeurs, of course.

I did, however, make an exception for Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I loved Sacks's sympathy and admiration for his patients, and his ability to convey how the state of your brain affects your experience of reality. I vividly recall the tale of the woman who lost the sense that coordinates our body's movements and had to learn from scratch how to send messages from the brain to her legs, hands, feet etc. It was as mind-bending as a Philip K Dick novel.

I meant to read more of Sacks but nine years later have yet to do so. He did, however, write the foreword for my most recent foray into the realms of Sick Lit, A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy. I spotted a big pile in a local remainder bookstore, and was instantly grabbed by the title, bizarre cover and the fact that it was written by a Hungarian completely unknown to me. The back cover matter was mysterious: one day Karinthy was sitting in his favourite café in Budapest when he heard the roar of a passing train, only to remember that the city had got rid of its trams years earlier. "… Only then did he realise that he was suffering from an auditory hallucination of extraordinary intensity."

Fantastic, I thought: a book about a man hallucinating his way through a world that doesn't exist any more (having been destroyed by the second world war). Although the hallucinations were the result of a tumour I was willing to give it a go, setting aside my queasiness for a reading experience I anticipated would be both refined and bizarre. I was not disappointed. In his text Karinthy mixes exotic words like:

Cyst, Cerebellum, Neuralgia, Extrasystole, Dyshidrosis

With place names like:

Zugliget, Egyetemter, Kerepes Cemetery

And evocative chapter titles:

The Invisible Train, An Amateur film Show, Pulsating Stars, Addis Ababa

… to great effect. But rather than provide the reader with a fever dream of a lost world, the urbane and droll Karinthy rapidly integrates his hallucinations into everyday life and instead embarks on a journey to discover what's wrong with him. He (correctly) diagnoses himself with a brain tumour, but can't persuade anyone else, including his doctors. That might sound reminiscent of another eastern European K, but Karinthy's humour and dry wit gives the book an entirely different, almost light tone.

And speaking of tone, there is a fascinating and illuminating difference between the language of A Journey Round My Skull and the many tumorous volumes that have followed it. When Karinthy articulates what is happening to him, he reaches for Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, and sundry Hungarians you've never heard of. He sees and explains himself via literature, instead of the modern babble of confessional self-analysis. He is thus a man from an old world standing on the cusp of a scientific revolution, stepping into the future but still dressed in morning jacket and top hat.

The book ends with Karinthy's trip to a pioneering brain surgeon in Sweden, who saws him open and cuts out the tumour. Karinthy, conscious the whole time, describes the sensation of having his brain exposed and fondled with an almost sensuous pleasure. To everyone's astonishment he makes a full recovery and the book ends. A year later, however, Karinthy died of a brain haemorrhage while bending over to tie his shoelaces. He was 51. That's how Death gets you sometimes.

According to Sacks, Karinthy's book is "the first autobiographical description of a journey inside the human brain" and still "one of the best". Indeed, I can't imagine there are many that are better. But I doubt that would be much consolation to the unfortunate Karinthy.

• Biography

Daniel Kalder
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The New Jersey Nets star on the NBA coming to London, reading Harry Potter and his favourite pasta shape

Welcome to London, Devin ... It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, maybe for you. Have you had a good look around? Not so much. I saw Big Ben, and I think we drove past Buckingham Palace yesterday, but that was as much as I've got to see. I've had a good look around my hotel.

But the good news is you'll be back in March, and actually playing some basketball ... Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. The crowds here are great. We played here two years ago against Miami and the crowd was amazing then. I watch a little bit of football on TV so I know a little bit what to expect from you guys.

Do you think Britain is ready to become a nation of basketballaholics? I do think it could take off. People are curious enough, and I think it's popular enough already.

Are we more likely to fall for basketball than you are to take up football? I think it's even. America already loves soccer. A lot of my friends played it when they were kids.

So you'll be back here regularly from now on? I think that's the trend they're trying to start – to follow in the NFL's footsteps, have two different teams play here every year, try to globalise the game. When you see it up close and personal as opposed to on TV, it's got more of an effect.

Will the rest of Europe/the world get a visit too, or is it a special treat just for us? I think the goal is for it to go to other European cities. It's sort of a test run here and then it can expand. I think pretty soon you'll see every NBA team play at least two games a season overseas.

Won't they miss you back in wherever-it-is-you-play? I don't think so. We're moving to a new building and a new city – they haven't had us for that long so I don't think they'll miss us for a couple of days.

The last time you were here, some English bloke took the mickey out of you on a practise court and the video went viral. Some people thought it was all a set-up arranged by Adidas. What's the truth? I believe it was arranged. Still, I let him get past me too easily and the video was a bit embarrassing. I learned a valuable lesson. Actually I ran into his brother yesterday – he did an interview with me. We're trying to set up a rematch right now – I think I'll take that one a little bit more seriously.

And what – other than revenge – are your goals for the season? For the team, the target's always to get into the play-offs. Me, I'm trying to get into my all-star form that I had two years ago.

Your other famous moment was a 47-foot buzzer-beater last year that is now known as "the Harris Heave". Do you practise that kind of stuff? Not really, that's just down to instinct.

So if you tried that shot 10 times, how many would go in? I'd say out of 10 I'd hit at least three.

That's pretty good going. Who'd get more, though? Who's the best basketball player in the entire world? Got to be Kobe Bryant. He's been up there a while now.

Enough about basketball, what was the last concert you went to? I believe the last one I went to was Alicia Keys, but I go to a fair amount. I'm going to see Eminem and Jay-Z play together at Yankee Stadium next week.

And what was the last thing you saw at the cinema? I just went to see Inception the other day. It was pretty good, but I hear it's better the second time around so I might have to see it again.

Do you read much? Is there a book you could recommend to Small Talk's avid readership? The last book I read was the last Harry Potter. I think you guys have all read it already.

You've got a pretty intricate tattoo going on down your arm. What's that of exactly? That's kind of my conscience. It's just there with me, all the time. I wouldn't say I designed it but I had a hand in it, me and the tattoo artist himself.

Cheese or chocolate? Well, I'm from Wisconsin so I've got to say cheese.

Why's that? Because Wisconsin is pretty famous for its cheese.

No it isn't. Small Talk has never heard of cheese from Wisconsin? It's true. I think Wisconsin cheddar's the big one.

What's your favourite pasta shape? I like Fettucini Alfredo, so it's fettucini, right?

Fettucini, you say. An intriguing choice. And who would win a fight between a lion and a tiger? A lion – he's the king of the jungle.

A popular yet considered answer. I'd better give you a little time for souvenir shopping before you head home. Thanks Small Talk. I'll get a souvenir if I can find one.

Good luck Devin, bye! Bye!

NBA Games – London 2011 will see the New Jersey Nets take on the Toronto Raptors at The O2 on March 4 and 5, 2011 in the first ever NBA Regular Season Games in Europe. Tickets are now on sale at www.theo2.co.uk.

• NBA
• Sport and leisure

Simon Burnton
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The opening chapter of Nadifa Mohamed's debut novel, longlisted for the 2010 Guardian first book award

The acclaimed graphic novel about the mysterious, scarred old West bounty hunter has become a muddled, inept film, says Phelim O'Neill

Even if you didn't know how troubled this adaptation of John Albano's comic book was, with rumours of countless rewrites and reshoots, it's obvious something is drastically wrong here even before the opening titles are over. After we are introduced to gruesomely scarred semi-supernatural old west bounty hunter Hex (Brolin, in grisly prosthetics), there is a terrible expositional animated sequence; it's as if they simply forgot to film some key scenes. Otherwise, it seems like a bad case of lost nerve: Hex is never quite the bad-ass he is in the comics, while the plot attempts some clunky relevance as Hex hunts down a campy villain (Malkovich) who is making an olden-days weapon of mass destruction. It just gets louder and more nonsensical as it progresses, with Fox shoe-horned into as many scenes as possible.

Rating: 2/5

• Josh Brolin
• John Malkovich
• Action and adventure
• Science fiction and fantasy
• Comics

Phelim O'Neill
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Tony Blair thinks the media got McCain and Obama the wrong way around in 2008, according to his autobiography

What did Tony Blair think of the 2008 US presidential election? Chris Brooke, who is valiantly live-tweeting his reading of Tony Blair's memoir, A Journey, highlights Blair's take, which comes on pages 512-513:

It's one of the oddest things about modern politics. The paradigm imposed, usually by a particular media view, completely disorients the proper analysis. I used to smile at the way the Obama/McCain election of 2008 was framed: Barack was the man of vision, John the old political hack. One seemed to call America to a new future, the other seemed a stale relic of the past. This was a paradigm that determined the mood and defined the election.

Actually, it was John who was articulating a foreign policy that could be called wildly idealistic for the cause of freedom. Barack was the supreme master of communicating a brilliant vision, but he was a practitioner of realism, advocating a cautious approach based on reaching out, arriving at compromises and striking deals to reduce tension. For these purposes, leave alone who is right. It's just a really interesting feature of modern politics that the mood trumps the policy every time.

• Tony Blair
• Barack Obama
• John McCain
• US elections 2008
• US politics
• US national book awards

Richard Adams
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In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in. Now he can only emit a long wail of impotence

Who said books are dead? Did he blog or tweet, video or iPad? No, Tony Blair wanted to get a message across, so he wrote a book. He smeared the black stuff on trees, stitched it together and made people go out to buy it. Good for him.

Blair's mildly engaging stream of auto-eroticism shows him memoirising much as he ruled. He uses the first person singular a million times. He stages everything. He fixes on a theme and controls the narrative. The intention is to smother an Iraq apologia in endless quotables on Gordon Brown and his emotional idiocy and general hopelessness. It is cruel, but has worked a dream.

Blair was a politician of great talent, and a miserable prime minister. The service he did his country was considerable, but it was done by the time he took office in 1997. It was to anaesthetise the Labour party while he turned it into a vehicle to make him electable and his newly espoused Thatcherism irreversible, much as Attlee had made welfarism irreversible in 1945. The British left is still in denial on the subject.

When the Social Democratic party was formed in 1981, an ambitious young Blair abused them as "middle-aged, middle-class erstwhile Labour", with only "lingering social consciences [to] prevent them voting Tory". When, a year later, Anthony Blair fought Beaconsfield, he was for CND, against Trident and for withdrawal from Europe. (None of this is in his memoir.)

When Blair arrived in parliament in 1983, he was eloquent in defence of clause IV renationalisation: "not a question of reinterpreting it … but a question of giving effect to it". There should be no curb on trade union rights, and privatisation should be abandoned "here, now and for ever". When Nigel Lawson cut income tax to 40%, Blair demanded Labour increase it to 60%.

By the end of the 80s, ambition had worked a wondrous change. Blair abandoned nuclear disarmament and subscribed to the EU. As employment spokesman, he declared that Thatcher's union laws should stay. He did a U-turn on privatisation. Unlike Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Brown, Blair saw himself as classless and placeless, at ease in Thatcher's world. He travelled to the US with Brown and, like De Tocqueville, returned mesmerised, in particular by Clinton's use of political charisma.

When he became leader, Blair's self-styled "project" dared not speak its Thatcherite name, but it understood that success could lie only in capturing the middle ground, in the "electoral necessity of bourgeois ascendancy". New Labour should hang loose, talking about right and wrong, individual choice, community not state. Blair himself was unashamedly rightwing, espousing the nuclear deterrent and telling a police conference that "if we dare not speak the language of punishment then we deny the real world".

Such idealism in a prince, as Machiavelli pointed out, was useless without power. Blair's memoir is as its self-regarding best in recounting how he re-engineered the Labour party so it could never again undermine its leader, as it had Gaitskell, Wilson and Callaghan. Where previous prime ministers had struggled to bend a monolithic party to their will, Blair set out to smash it.

In 1996 Blair wrote that unions should have "no special or privileged place" in his party. "We will not be held to ransom by the unions. We will stand up to strikes," he assured the Sun, and he meant it. The bloc vote should go; the party conference should lose power over the manifesto; the national executive should be divorced from the shadow cabinet; even the holy of holies, clause IV, should evaporate.

The party was torn to shreds as Blair scored victory after victory against "old Labour". He turned a 19th-century movement into a 21st-century presidential machine, puffed up with candyfloss vacuities such as "traditional values in a changed world". Blair's appetite for cliche was, and is, gargantuan.

Blair never criticised Thatcher. In 1995 he lauded her as "a radical, not a Tory". He told the New York Times that Labour would be "unelectable" if it dismantled Thatcherism, one of the things "the 1980s got right". The lady returned the compliment, remarking during the 1997 election that he was "a man who won't let Britain down". She was the first VIP – before any Labour figure – whom Blair invited to Downing Street. He was obsessed by her good opinion, like Odysseus panting at the sirens' call but blocking his colleagues' ears.

In office Blair was a true fundamentalist. He adored Thatcher's policies on law and order, refusing penal reform. He carried privatisation far beyond what she had tolerated, fuelled by his affection for high finance and private wealth. He mimicked Thatcher's belligerence in foreign affairs, loving to be thought "not wobbly". Even his "regrets" have a Thatcherite tinge: the foxhunting ban and freedom of information.

The left's refusal to accept what Blair did to Labour is reminiscent of the Whig acceptance of reform in the 1830s. When Britain is experiencing radical change, it prefers to look the other way. Blair's conversion was so deft that his party bought the Thatcher ticket hook, line and sinker, but on the strict understanding that it was not mentioned.

Needless to say, little of this is in Blair's book, though he does let slip a tribute to Thatcher's "character, leadership and intelligence" in smashing the unions. One reason must be that, while Blair understood Thatcherism's potency, he was blind to its shortcomings. He grasped the essence of his creed but could not see how to take it forward.

Not for three decades has anyone in Britain charted a proper boundary between the public and private sectors. Blair noted that in 1997 Thatcher's public sector was "largely unreformed" and that, had Attlee returned, "he would have greeted it as an old friend". Yet he did nothing. He could change Labour ruthlessly, but quailed before the gods of public administration. This was despite having turned Downing Street into a furnace of centralised power. He and Brown tipped unprecedented quantities of money into the pockets of public servants, yet the quality of Britain's schools, hospitals and social services remains shocking.

Blair blames much of this failure on Brown, but the failure was Blair's. He left Brown in charge, with his co-architect of madness, Ed Balls – who without apology now thinks himself equipped to run the country. Blair never had the guts to sack either of them. As a result, one of the brightest sparks to cross the political firmament since the war can emit only a long wail of impotence.

Perhaps Blair is right, that Brown was his nemesis, a tragedy collapsed across the path of history. If so, a duo that could have created so much, and yet created so little, is just another might-have-been.

• Tony Blair
• Labour
• Politics past
• Margaret Thatcher
• Gordon Brown
• Labour government 1997 - 1999

Simon Jenkins
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Publishing's notion of what women want is dated and patronising. In my case it's like trying to stuff a rottweiler in a dress

The latest literary dust-up in the United States concerns the outsize critical admiration of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, the follow-up to his 2001 National Book Award winner The Corrections. Freedom secured two worshipful reviews from the New York Times in one week, the Book Review's lengthy cover essay drooling with such jaw-dropped awe that it was hard to read for the saliva stains. Franzen himself appears on the cover of Time, and Freedom sits in President Obama's stack of holiday reading.

Fellow novelist Jodi Picoult ignited online fireworks last week by claiming that female writers never attract the same reverence as "white male literary darlings" like Franzen. Naturally Picoult risks the appearance of plain old envy. Though a skilful craftsman, Picoult may also lack the literary standing to make such a charge. Myself, I've yet to read Freedom, embargoed until this Wednesday, but it does sound like an excellent book, one I'm looking forward to.

Nevertheless, Picoult has a point. A female novelist would never enjoy a Franzen-scale frenzy of adulation in America, which maintains two distinct tiers in fiction. The heavy hitters – cultural icons who often produce great doorstop novels that no one ever argues are under-edited – are exclusively male. Rising literati like Rick Moody and Jonathan Franzen efficiently assume the spots left unoccupied by John Updike and Norman Mailer, like a rigged game of musical chairs. Then there's everybody else – including a raft of female writers who keep the publishing industry afloat by selling to its primary consumers: women.

Elaine Showalter did a bang-up job in the Guardian Review last spring explaining why American women are never credited with writing the Great American Novel while identifying female writers who deserve more acclaim. So in preference to singing yet more praises of the gifted Annie Proulx, I'll share an inside glimpse of how publishers are complicit in ghettoising not only women writers but women readers into this implicitly lesser cultural tier.

With merciful exceptions, my publishers constantly send prospective covers for my books that play to what "women readers" supposedly want. Take the American reissue of my fourth novel Game Control – a wicked, nasty novel about a plot to kill two billion people overnight. The main character is a man, the focal subject demography. Yet what cover do I first get sent? A winsome young lass in a floppy hat, gazing soulfully to the horizon in a windblown field – soft focus, in pastels. Dismayed, I emailed back: "Did your designers read any of this book?" When I proposed a cover photo by Peter Beard of sagging elephant carcasses – perfectly apt – the sales department was horrified. Women would be repelled by dead animals. We settled on live elephants, but it was pulling teeth to get girls off that paperback.

Or take the amicable difference of opinion I am having with my German publisher, since apparently this problem is also European. My latest novel, So Much for That, is told from two male points of view. Its subject matter – illness, mortality, and the fiscal depredations of American healthcare – is unisex, its tone furious. Yet what's on the cover? A woman, looking stricken. Male readers wouldn't be caught dead reading a book with that cover on the Strassenbahn.

The titling of that novel also came up against stereotypes of my ostensibly all-female audience. The US sales department vetoed the original title, Time is Money, for "sounding like nonfiction", though fiction appropriating and subverting nonfiction titles is commonplace (nobody mistook Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs for an international policy journal). It took me a while to discern the real problem: Time is Money was too direct, too aggressive, too in your face; it would frighten the girls away. This suspicion was confirmed when I suggested the Germans, with no equivalent of "so much for that", simply use my original title. Uh-uh. Zeit ist Geld is "too male and harsh". I admired my publisher's candour, if not his neutral substitute: The Better Part of Life.

Publishing's notion of what "women want" is dated and condescending. In the era of Venus Williams, girliness and goo isn't the way to every woman's heart. Yet publishers presume that women only buy a book that looks soft and that appears to be all about women, even if it isn't. Yet women, unlike men, buy books by and about both sexes.

Granted, the marketing logic seems unassailable: in the US, Britain and Germany, 80% of fiction readers are women. (Which mysteriously makes women look bad: those layabout ladies have nothing better to do than loll around and read. Yet if 80% of fiction readers were men, we'd assume that men are still far more cultured and better informed, while women squander their free time on mopping the floor.) Why appeal to the meagre male 20%?

Simple: smart female authors who twig that their careers depend on writing solely for their own gender will instinctively narrow their subject matter. Meanwhile, gauzy covers with shy titles signal that the literary establishment needn't take this work seriously. Little wonder, then, that the language of extravagant regard in that New York Times Book Review write-up of Jonathan Franzen – "Like all great novels," Freedom "illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence" – is rarely lavished on female novelists. Little wonder that admiration of Franzen's focus on "family as microcosm or micro-history" would invert to disdain should a woman choose the same subject: look, just another bint stuck in her tiny domestic world.

When my novels are packaged as exclusively for women, I'm not only cut off from a vital portion of my audience but clearly labelled as an author the literary establishment is free to dismiss. By stereotyping my work's audience as self-involved and prissy, women-only packaging also insults my readers, who could all testify that trussing up my novels as sweet, girly and soft is like stuffing a rottweiler in a dress.

Lionel Shriver won the 2005 Orange prize for fiction with We Need to Talk About Kevin

• Publishing
• Gender
• Marketing & PR

Lionel Shriver
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Bradley is one of more than 100 poets who have contributed to an anthology of polemical poetry damning the Coalition spending cuts

In the fourth in our series of interviews with authors longlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, Michelle Pauli talks Theresa Breslin about writing historical fiction for a modern audience

Historical fiction for teens may not be as in vogue as vampires right now, but for Theresa Breslin, the stories the past inspires can seem just as fantastical. The Carnegie-winning Scottish author has written more than 30 children's books, many of them tackling serious contemporary subjects such as bullying – but, recently it has been characters from centuries gone that have caught her imagination.

Her latest novel, Prisoner of the Inquisition, which has been longlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, is set in 15th-century Spain. It was a time of tumult for the country: the throne was divided between two monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon; Tomás de Torquemada, the architect of the Spanish Inquisition, was at the height of his powers; and Christopher Columbus was about to set sail across the Atlantic.

"It was almost too good to be true," says Breslin, laughing down the phone from her home in Scotland. "If you had orchestrated this as a fiction story and gone to an editor saying, I've got a magnificent queen who was intent on reunifying the country, endless religious upheaval and an explorer, they would have said it was a bit much. But, of course, it's all fact."

Prisoner of the Inquisition is narrated alternately by two teenagers, Zarita and Saulo, whose lives first connect when privileged, naive Zarita, daughter of a wealthy town magistrate, accuses Saulo's father, a beggar, of touching her in a church. He is killed and Saulo escapes, secretly pledging to take his revenge on Zarita and her family. His side of the story encompasses slavery at sea, an encounter with pirates and a burgeoning friendship with Christopher Columbus. Meanwhile, Zarita sees her life change completely as a result of shifts within her family and the impact of a much wider political force: the Inquisition. The two finally meet again at the court of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in the Moorish city of Granada, in a nail-biting showdown.

In synopsis, it may indeed sound "a bit much". But, as in Breslin's other historical novels, which cover the first world war, Catherine de Medici, Leonardo da Vinci and the Borgia dynasty, the story is firmly grounded by her extensive research into the way people lived and loved during the period.

Readers can safely lose themselves in Breslin's stories with full confidence that, while she may be weaving a fictional tale with fictional characters around real people who lived hundreds of years ago, the underlying historical base is sound. Her dedication to the period is borne out by the passion with which she talks about her lengthy research process.

"What I try to do – and I think this is the former librarian in me – is to get primary source material," she explains. "For instance, with Remembrance [Breslin's novel about the first world war, seen from a teenage perspective], I looked at an original journal reporting the Battle of the Somme that says 'we're winning and it's a glorious battle'. I also studied a military record of the men that were killed and what happened to the battalions. It all helps to let you know what people are thinking."

But it's the smaller, personal touches that bring Breslin's historical worlds back to life. For these, she researches how people dressed, played, ate – and drank. "In the middle ages they must have been half-cut half the time," she laughs. "They couldn't really drink the water. It was too dangerous, so they would drink mead instead."

She also touches on the importance of clothes as a marker of how people are feeling. In Remembrance, a moment of light relief amid the misery of the trenches is provided by a discussion on hem lengths.

In Prisoner, meanwhile, Zarita puts on her nun's garb when she reaches her lowest ebb. She feels a sense of freedom as she pulls the hood down, puts her hands into the sleeves and sinks back into herself without distraction. The habit might be made of rough grey wool, but the character observes: "It comforted me more than if I were wearing lace and brocade … I was cocooned from the outside world."

Yet, winnowing through libraries can only take a writer so far. "Ultimately, I really have to go there," she says. "Really, truly, it's not just an indulgence to get away from a Scottish winter. You need to go there and see the flowers in Andalucia, smell the sea, feel the sun on your feet when you walk through the palace of Alhambra."

Travelling on location also led her to discover snippets of history she would never otherwise have come across. Isabella's tomb in Granada revealed a clue about the queen's (accurate) estimation of her intelligence, compared with her consort's.

A helpful guide in the Hall of the Sultans, meanwhile, pointed out a secret gallery where the Sultan's female relatives would have been able to peer to keep an eye on proceedings. This discovery inspired a crucial scene in the story.

Visiting the location where the book would be set also led Breslin to question how to tackle more gruesome events of the period (specifically the acts of the Inquisition) in a book for teens. The depictions of the techniques employed by the inquisitors horrified her. "There was one museum I had to walk out of," she says. "It was horrific."

Consequently, while there are torture scenes in the book, with enough detail to make a weak-stomached reader wince, they avoid gratuitousness. For Breslin, though, it remained important to retain some details of the practices of the time in order to maintain what she calls "truth".

"At the end Zarita is crying not just for Spain and for humanity, but also for herself, because she is going to be racked," she says. "I think if I hadn't shown a bit of the factual thing, that wouldn't be convincing. In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth."

Bresling adds: "Remembrance was the same. It was barbaric, but if you sanitise it, it's not true. Equally if you gloss over it, it's not true. How do you handle it? It was very difficult to show what was happening and the effects it would have on someone's spirit – not just their body – and deliver that truth."

Remembrance kicked off Breslin's move to historical fiction when she told her editor she wanted to write "something about world war one from a teenager's point of view, because it's going to be the war of the previous century". Her editor was doubtful.

Following that success, Breslin said the historical figure she really wanted to write about was da Vinci. Again there were doubts. "It was in the days before Dan Brown and my editor said 'do you really think people would be interested in da Vinci?'" says Breslin, chuckling.

She won't drop too many clues about her next book, except to say that "it's another historical queen" (and no, it's not Elizabeth). It's safe to say that Breslin's editor is unlikely to be doubtful this time.

• Guardian children's fiction prize
• Children and teenagers
• Fiction
• History
• Awards and prizes

Michelle Pauli
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Lawyer says writer exposed embezzlement and migrants' suffering during building of Sanmen dam on Yellow river

Chinese police have detained an author for almost a fortnight following the publication of his book about forced relocations in the 1950s, his daughter said.

Officers said they were holding Xie Chaoping, a former journalist, for "illegal business activities" after detaining him at his home in Beijing on 19 August, said Li Mo.

Li said her father had just paid for the publication of his book, The Great Migration, which is about the construction of the Sanmen dam on the Yellow river.

The book charts the struggles of hundreds of thousands of people relocated due to the project, and reportedly accuses authorities in Weinan, Shaanxi province, of embezzling money meant to compensate those affected.

The 55-year-old writer has been transferred to a detention house in Shaanxi. Li added: "The charge doesn't make sense. My father didn't do illegal business. They arrested him for the book. My father just wrote the truth. He didn't just make up things, everything in this book has evidence. He didn't think there was anything wrong with the book. It is quite a shock for him to get arrested."

Xie's lawyer, Zhou Ze, told the South China Morning Post he had been allowed to see his client, who seemed in reasonably good spirits. "Xie thinks he's being persecuted because he's disclosed embezzlement, local government wrongdoing, migrants' suffering and land disputes," said Zhou. "It is another case of abuse of public power to repress public scrutiny and a breach of freedom of publication."

He told another newspaper that even if the book had been printed without official approval, it was the responsibility of the publisher, not the author.

Li Wanmin, an activist who tipped off Xie about the story, said: "The book is an objective account of what has happened to immigrant peasants, a marginalised group among peasants." He said that some of the farmers had to move eight times and that many died of starvation during the great famine in the early 1960s.

Another campaigner for the relocated residents said he taken several thousand copies of the book to Weinan in June, but that officials confiscated them, saying they were cracking down on illegal publications.

According to a reporter at the Beijing News, Xie first tried to write about the corruption allegations in 2006, but officials told the magazine he worked for to suppress the report.

His wife said he then began to collect more material on the issue and decided to publish a book himself. Flash magazine, in Shaanxi province, agreed to publish his work as a supplement if he paid 50,000 yuan (£5,000).

David Bandurski, of the China media project at Hong Kong University, said that many historical episodes remained highly sensitive in China. But he added: "A lot of actions against individual publications or reporters are coming from entrenched local interests [rather than higher officials]. There are so many examples of history being tied in with local immediate interests. You don't have to stretch very far to see how this could be more than a case of remote history which could touch on [local] leaders."

According to the English language Global Times newspaper, Xie's lawyer said the corruption allegations in the book related to residents who were relocated again in 1985.

An official at the publicity department at the Weinan public security bureau told the newspaper that the investigation was continuing, adding: "I have as little information as you do."

The Guardian's phone calls to Weinan public security bureau rang unanswered.

• China
• Chinese literature

Tania Branigan
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The former prime minister wearing a poppy in Jonathan Yeo's portrait was no coincidence. It was the first step in a deliberate plan to influence his political legacy

In January 2008, a portrait of Tony Blair by Jonathan Yeo was unveiled in which the former prime minister wore a poppy. Reviewing it for the Guardian, I was skeptical about the notion that, somehow, the artist had subversively caught his subject off guard or conned him into wearing this unmistakable reminder of the wars that have bloodied his reputation. Blair is an experienced manipulator of his own image, I opined: if he wears a poppy it is because he wants it that way. Would Blair, I wondered, one day find the words to match this apparently guilt-stricken image?

Well, here come 700 pages of them. The quotations already published from his book, and the reactions to it, should remind us that Blair is one of the most virtuous – in Machiavelli's sense of the word, meaning effective – politicians of modern times. On the front page of yesterday's Daily Mail, a photograph homed in on Blair's eyes. Making them look icy, it seemed to unconsciously ape the "Demon Eyes" poster the Tories used against Blair in the 1997 election, in which he is portrayed with a gash cut through his face to reveal the devil within. The interesting thing about this visual echo is that the Tory campaign poster failed to damage Blair, back in the day.

Words and images match – the Mail front page headline attacking Blair's "crocodile tears" seems hysterical and forced. The fact is Blair, in the quotes published from his memoir underneath the picture, sounds like someone who knows the enormity of ordering soldiers to die in a war. They are dead and he is alive. He knows that. At least admit these are articulate words: "I feel words of condolence and sympathy to be entirely inadequate. They have died, and I, the decision-maker in the circumstances that led to their deaths, still live". Where is the comparable quote from Margaret Thatcher about the Falklands, from Lyndon B Johnson about Vietnam, or even from president Obama about Afghanistan?

I have no idea if Blair means these words, if his charitable gesture is sincere or tactical, if he really loses sleep, or if it makes a difference that he does. But Blair is remaking his own image faster than critics can deface it. I think you could already see, in Blair's decision to wear a poppy for his portrait two years ago, how he was going to get to grips with history.

• Art
• Tony Blair

Jonathan Jones
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Why do writers whose prose is clean and clear turn into gushing Kate Winslets in the thank-you pages of their books?

The title story of If I Loved You, I would Tell You This, Robin Black's debut collection, is a shimmering, skewed tale of domestic disturbance and urban disaffection. It's one of 10 glacially poised stories that stand out for their simplicity; that quietly dissect the minor dramas of life and love, and blaze with understated emotion. However, on finishing the collection something else stayed with me almost as clearly as the stories themselves: the fulsome four pages of acknowledgements at the end.

Black stops short of thanking the baristas in the local coffee house or the manufacturers of the computer she uses, but it wouldn't have been a surprise to see them mentioned. Friends, fellow writers and her family are given long, involved thank yous explaining exactly why they are great critics, writers and/or friends. For someone whose prose is so lithe and without adornment, these pages seem gushingly unreal: as though a literary hybrid of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet has wrested control of the keyboard.

Acknowledgements are one of the few places in a book when a writer can break out of their fictional world and address readers in their own voice. This is something that perhaps is more powerful than we realise. While I know the text is supposed to be the most important thing, and I'm well aware that the biographical details of a writer's life should be incidental to the reading experience, the acknowledgement pages can have a subtle effect on the way I read a book.

The best thing to do would be not to read them; to ignore those pages and stick with the story. But in moments of distraction I can't help flicking to the back to see whether I recognise the name of their editor, or if there will be gracious thanks to famous novelists or artistic grantors. I can't help but slightly judge an author by the way they acknowledge their debts: too effusive and they seem a bit needy and try-hard; too brief – a list of names in alphabetical order – and you run the risk of appearing cold and dismissive. It's probably the difficulty of treading such a fine line that makes me read long lists of names of people I have never met.

Despite my enthusiasm for them, there is a sense of the juvenile about acknowledgements – they seem longer and more sweated over in debut novels and collections than in books by more established names, from which acknowledgements are regularly entirely absent. Where they do appear they are often to express thanks for "Big" Jim Marshall, the Texas Ranger who taught the author the ins and outs of surveillance techniques, or Dr Ahab O'Shaunessy who explained the history of sickle cell anaemia, or captain Bryce Jones whose experiences informed the Afghan section of this book – normally suffixed by that staple of acknowledgement pages "all mistakes are of course my own". These kinds of acknowledgements can often appear to have been given with one eye on letting the reader know exactly how much research has gone into their fiction.

Let's be honest: it would most likely be safer for an author to eschew an acknowledgments page altogether and give the people they want to thank a bottle of wine and a copy of the book. But that somehow doesn't cut it when you've been writing a collection for years and have been helped immeasurably along the way. I can understand why Robin Black might want to pour her heart out to her nearest and dearest, but perhaps she might have done better by taking a leaf out of the rest of her book and keeping things clean and clear.

• Fiction

Stuart Evers
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