<div><p> As I spent a large part of the year writing, my actual reading was rather restricted, and limited to fact rather than fiction. I very much enjoyed Ferdinand Mount's Cold Cream (Bloomsbury, £20) and the endlessly fascinating Diaries of James Lees-Milne (John Murray). I also liked The Other Garden and Collected Stories by ...

<div><p> THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK by Alice Munro Chatto, <p> In the Foreword she writes to her new book Alice Munro, Canada's best known and most admired short story writer, states that some 10 or 12 years ago she began to study the history of her family and envisaged a memoir ...

<div><p>The dangerous edge of things RUNAWAY by Alice Munro Chatto, <p>For the best part of a decade now, many of Alice Munro's ingeniously crafted stories have revolved around an aging spouse who is dying and a younger woman who has been drafted into the family to look after that person ...

<div><p>The time has come... <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film">Guardian.co.uk/film</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/filmandmusic">Film & Music</a> have got together to inaugurate the Guardian First Film award, in which we are ...