My Best Books

One of Britain’s most trenchant comics offers a fascinating insight into creating comedy

Stewart Lee is the most enigmatic of comedians: a thoughtful, softly spoken man who somehow managed to become a hate figure for the 65,000 people who complained to the BBC about his musical, Jerry Springer: The Opera. And they didn’t just complain, they complained in advance, anticipating their inevitable fury and disapproval, and making it known before the show was broadcast, presumably fearful of being so appalled by the musical that they would subsequently lose the ability to type. It’s that very fear that has always held me back from watching Mamma Mia.

But although Lee is notorious for this debacle, he is also renowned for being one of the best comedians alive. His slow, measured voice, his sulky, hectoring manner, and his relentlessly logical fury make him a compelling stand-up. In an industry where blandness is often rewarded above all else, Stewart Lee is an oasis of intellect and originality. He is unlikely to appear at the Royal Variety Performance any time soon (unless the Queen expresses an interest in material about the professional ethics of Joe Pasquale), and nor should he. It may be bad for his bank balance, but Lee’s audience see him as the king of counter-culture. If he sold out, became smiley and easygoing, their sad hearts would surely break.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-up Comedian will be required reading for comedy fans. Among other things, the book contains the transcripts of three of his critically acclaimed shows, heavily annotated as Lee explains how he chose a particular joke, or how this section was improvised differently each night, or why this line needs to be in this spot to prepare the audience for the next section. He is analytical, critical and perfectly willing to say when he finds himself proud of something he wrote, or occasionally ashamed. It is a fascinating insight into the process of creating comedy, and making months of work feel like a fresh, spontaneous show each night.

But the risk with trying to record a stand-up performance in any medium is that it loses some of what makes it good. Stand-up – at the risk of sounding like a total ponce – is an ephemeral experience that occupies the space between comic and audience. Every gig is unique. The venue, the start-time, even the day of the week make a huge difference to the experience: a complicated show needs a focused audience, and those tend to come on week-nights.

So although it’s a pleasure to read the transcripts for Lee’s shows, the experience is frustrating, because they cry out to be performed. It’s something he knows, too. In a footnote on a routine about Richard Littlejohn, he writes: “This doesn’t work on the page, and ideally, my ambition is to get to the point where none of my stand-up works on the page. I don’t think stand-up should really work on the page, so the very existence of this book is an indication of my ultimate failure as a comedian.” Quite the reverse: the book makes you long to hear rather than read him.

Far more successful are the sections of the book linking the shows, in which Lee talks about his early career, his health, the birth of his son. The description of his victory in a comedy competition in 1990, for example, is glorious: “My prize for winning the Hackney Empire and City Limits magazine’s New Act of the Year competition was £500, a booking at the Hackney Empire, a booking at the Comedy Store and a slot on a TV show I can’t remember the name of. I received the money on the night, but the Hackney Empire slot took a decade to materialise, the Comedy Store hasn’t booked me to this day, and the TV show never called. And the winner’s certificate was made out to ‘Steward Lee’.” Ah, welcome to show business.

If Lee is hard on himself, he is heroically vicious when it comes to those whose pretensions or artistic choices he dislikes. “I do appreciate,” he writes, while explaining over three pages the use of an Evan Parker saxophone solo as his pre-show music, “it’s always dangerous and potentially shaming for comedians to claim inspiration from great musicians, or indeed any legitimate artists. When TV’s Russell Howard cites, in an interview, Bob Dylan’s mantra ‘every great artist needs to be in a permanent state of becoming’ as an influence, one wonders what relationship this profound phrase has with appearing on Mock the Week and making fun of Susan Boyle for having a hairy face?”

He’s no kinder about James Corden, Michael McIntyre and others, and it’s difficult not to agree. Stewart Lee could easily come across as smug or judgmental – and by his own admission, plenty of critics have interpreted his act that way. But he is so utterly unforgiving of his own flaws that it is foolish to think his laser-sharp mind is a place where he could ever be comfortable enough to be smug. This book should win him some new fans and cement the dislike of old detractors. And it’s impossible to imagine he would ever choose to do anything else.

Natalie Haynes is a stand-up comedian and writer.

If there’s one thing worse than a lousy lover, it is a lousy describer of the act of love

Why have writers retreated from the bedroom? Andrew Motion, Man Booker prize judge, believes the absence of lust in this year’s crop of novels is because these days authors live in fear of appearing on the shortlist for that other annual literary gong, the Bad Sex Award.

Certainly nowhere is a writer more exposed than in his description of the “grinding Hound” in his trousers (Norman Mailer) or the ‘”demon eel thrashing in his loins” (Paul Theroux). If there is one thing worse than a lousy lover, it is undoubtedly a lousy describer of the act of love.

So maybe Motion is on to something – embarrassment now achieves what censorship used to, and the wise novelist makes his excuses and leaves well before any compromising situation can develop.

Perhaps though, the answer is even more simple: just as Eskimos ultimately have a finite number of words for snow maybe, in our sex-obsessed culture, the lexicon of desire has reached its limits. How do I love thee? Even Shakespeare would have given up counting the ways sooner or later.

Julia Eccleshare suggests fiction for all ages

Cave Baby, by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Emily Gravett (Macmillan, £10.99). Age: 2+

An exuberant, rhyming text matched by equally lively illustrations makes this a romp of a bedtime story. Having wrecked the walls of his own cave by scribbling on them, the cheeky Cave Baby is threatened by his father with being fed to the big brown bear by the hairy mammoth, so when the hairy mammoth appears, Cave Baby fears the worst. Luckily, the hairy mammoth has other ideas about how to tame the wild baby via a happy moonlit interlude.

Harry & Hopper, by Margaret Wild, illustrated by Freya Blackwood (Scholastic, £6.99). Age: 4+

How a boy deals with grief when his dog dies is delicately and touchingly handled in this poignant picture book, which won a Kate Greenaway award for the illustrator. Harry’s love for Hopper is absolute; when Hopper dies, Harry takes time to let him go. Freya Blackwood’s energetic illustrations capture the vigour of their partnership and the pathos of the imaginary play that helps him gradually accept the dog’s disappearance.

Marvin Redpost: Super Fast, Out of Control! by Louis Sachar, illustrated by Amy Wummer (Bloomsbury, £4.99). Age: 7+

Riding down Suicide Hill is the ultimate test of bravery, and once he’s got his new bike, Marvin Redpost knows he is going to have to do it to prove he’s a hero. How Marvin psychs himself up, and how his parents try both to support him in taking on the challenge, while discouraging him from feeling the need to do it in the first place, is delicately captured in this gripping and tightly written story.

Iggy & Me on Holiday, by Jenny Valentine, illustrated by Joe Berger (HarperCollins, £4.99). Age 6+

Amid so many books about children doing sometimes outrageous and often disgusting things, these fondly observed stories of the everyday and homely antics of Iggy, a much-loved younger sister, are a delight. Iggy is dreading the summer holidays. She’ll miss so many things she loves, and is particularly worried about what will happen to the class pets. But Iggy is given an important job which makes the holidays look much brighter. Her subsequent adventures at the seaside warmly capture the small excitements of young children’s lives.

The Runaway Troll, by Matt Haig (Corgi, £6.99). Age: 9+

Most things in the troll world are pretty disgusting, and the family of Troll-Son, who have the misfortune to share an eyeball which is almost always lost, are no exception. Soon the Betterer, a nasty character who preys on parents’ anxieties about their badly behaved children and offers to improve them with a spell in Bettering Towers, identifies him as a likely candidate for training. Troll-Son escapes by hiding in the forest and dreaming of Samuel Blink, a human he has befriended. Can the Betterer catch both Troll-Son and Samuel Blink?

Edge of Nowhere, by John Smelcer (Andersen, £5.99). Age: 9+

When Seth and his dog Tucker are flung overboard from his father’s boat during a violent storm off Alaska, he knows he has little chance of survival. But luck is on their side and they pitch up on a small island. Seth is not an outdoors boy; he is moody and introverted and, as his father complains, does nothing but play computer games, especially since his mother’s death in a car crash. But put in a situation with real risk, he finds unexpected inner resources, drawing deeply on what he remembers of mythology for a greater understanding of the laws of survival. Throughout this hard-edged adventure, the dog provides emotional sustenance.

Infinity: Treasure, by Glenn Murphy (Templar, £12.99). Age: 10+

Stunningly produced and stuffed with information about all sorts of treasure, this book will delight for hours on end. Visual devices such as flaps, pop-outs and cutaways take readers deep into the secrets of treasure lost and found and the book includes a glorious centre fold-out detailing the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The story of the curse of the Aztec gold is told as a graphic novel, and there’s a CD to help the curious delve deeper.

Vamoose! by Meg Rosoff (Puffin, £3.99). Age: 12+

Hugely entertaining for all readers although published for teens, Rosoff’s brilliantly observed fable takes on snobbery, prejudice, motherhood and our current obsession with perfect, high-achieving children. When a teenager has a baby, society’s disapproval instantly kicks in: her own mother wants rid of it; the social worker sees piercings and a weird tattoo and assumes the girl is hopeless; the parents of the posh boyfriend are kept at arm’s length. And when the baby turns out to be a moose, things go from bad to worse. Meg Rosoff gleefully captures it all while never ignoring the wonder of maternal love. A gem of a book.

The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson (Walker, £7.99). Age: 12+

Romance without any vampires makes a welcome change for teen readers. Not that death is entirely absent. When her gorgeous and successful older sister drops dead unexpectedly, Lennie has to learn to live again. Perhaps because of her passion for Wuthering Heights, she finds herself falling in love. How grief and love run side by side is sensitively and intensely explored in this energetic, poetic and warm-blooded novel.

Three-quarters of a century after Allen Lane launched its cheap paperbacks, publishing faces another disruptive technology

Seventy-five years ago this week, the publisher Allen Lane launched a series of cheap paperbacks – a read that you could pick up cheap at a railway station and not fret too much if it got left behind on the train. The rest, as they say, is an almost infinite stack of orange-spined (and not just orange) Penguins.

The paperbacks that Lane championed in 1935 would today be called a disruptive technology: an innovation in the book market that drew in masses of new customers (in the old hardback age, many households would have only a Bible and possibly The Pilgrim’s Progress). Yet it also depressed prices. “The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence,” thought George Orwell. “So splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.”

It has taken three-quarters of a century for the book industry to be landed with another disruptive technology, but one is certainly here now: the ebook. That much was clear in the comments made to this paper yesterday by Lane’s contemporary successor as head of Penguin, John Makinson. As he put it, the fact that readers can now load dozens of novels or histories on to their iPads or Kindles or Sony whatevers and cart them around all summer long “does redefine what we do as publishers”.

Which is putting it mildly. Readers are no longer constrained by the weight of books, the vagaries of print runs or – given how many texts are available free or at heavy discount online – even price. No wonder that Amazon claims to have sold more digital books for its Kindle in America than hardbacks over the past three months. After all, hardbacks have been a declining market for years and – with (in many cases) smaller typefaces, meaner jacket designs and loo-roll paper – no longer feel like the publishing equivalent of luxury goods. More striking is that Amazon expects ebook sales to outstrip paperbacks by next Christmas.

A revolution for readers, then – but one that the giants of the publishing industry, just like their counterparts in music and, yes, newspapers have been slow to recognise. Mr Makinson is right to acknowledge the new and exciting possibilities for the book provided by digital publishing – hyperlinks, pictures, music – but his remarks reflect how late-developing all this thinking is. The same goes for the issues around who actually owns the publishing rights to digital books. Meanwhile, the gatekeepers to these new digital texts are no longer publishers, but IT companies (just like record labels effectively ceded control to Apple’s iTunes, or news media to Google). An exciting new world for readers beckons, but the future for publishers is as tense as any Agatha Christie.

Panel’s chairman defends portrayal of ‘curdled love’ as reviews range from excitement to criticism of ‘unbelievable misogyny’

Christos Tsiolkas’s Man Booker-longlisted novel The Slap opens with a bang when a man at a suburban barbecue hits another parent’s child.

But while some readers including, evidently, the Booker judges speak excitedly of the Australian author’s bravery in tackling uncomfortable truths, others criticise the word-of-mouth hit as “offensive” and say it is full of “unbelievable misogyny”. The Slap is turning out to be the most divisive Booker novel in years.

Although reviews from newspaper critics have been positive – “riveting from beginning to end,” said the Guardian ; “Tom Wolfe meets Philip Roth,” said the Los Angeles Times – readers posting reviews online have far more mixed opinions.

“Dull, boring and offensive,” wrote one Amazon reviewer. Another criticised its “constant obsession with bodily functions, sex, and the f-word”; another wrote that “it had no heart, such terrible cynicism … I feel soiled after reading it”.

The writer India Knight said she hated the book. “The whole novel has this ludicrous, comedy-macho sensibility – you get the feeling that if he’d been forced to read ‘literary’ fiction, Raoul Moat would have gulped it down in one sitting,” said Knight.

“It’s also unbelievably misogynistic, and I say that as someone who loves Flashman and Philip Roth … There is no joy, no love, no hope, no beauty, just these hideous people beating each other up, either physically or emotionally.”

The Slap is a bestseller in Australia, and UK sales are already rumoured to be colossal.

A publishing insider said the novel had sold 23,000 copies even before the Booker announcement, an almost unheard-of figure for new literary fiction from a relatively unknown author. The novel also won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller, said that there “hasn’t been a divisive book on taste grounds” in the Booker lineup for years.

The last time readers were really split over titles selected by judges was in 2003, when Martin Amis’s Yellow Dog and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time were both longlisted for the award and DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little went on to win it.

The former poet laureate Andrew Motion, who is chairing this year’s Booker panel, defended The Slap, saying “quite unusually for a Booker book, the copy I read already had international bestseller written across it, which means that not everyone thinks it’s a hateful misogynistic book”.

He also took issue with Knight’s comment that the novel was loveless, suggesting instead that “it’s curdled love … It’s more complicated than being hate-filled. It’s full of love that’s gone wrong”.

However, he admitted that he could “see why people might think it is misogynistic, in that the whole story is triggered by an act of male violence”.

The school holidays used to be great for tackling an entire series or a certain theme. Which books once filled your vacations?

We’ve dealt with the grown-ups, this week it’s the children’s turn. In tomorrow’s Guardian Review, Julia Eccleshare is selecting her favourite summer reads for kids of all ages. She makes some great suggestions, including Emily Gravett for the littl’uns and Meg Rosoff for teens (and beyond), but it got me thinking about what “summer reading” meant for me as a child. It certainly wasn’t about purpose-bought new books.

As school broke up and the seemingly endless holidays stretched ahead, I set off to the library armed with not only my card, permitting four books to be borrowed, but also my brother’s (which he would happily lend me in return for a 10p mix from the corner shop) and that of any other family member I could convince through some combination of special pleading and emotional blackmail (”We don’t go to theme parks like normal families so I need to go the library,” was the usual line). Special times called for special measures and the summer holidays were especially special – whole days could be spent curled up with a book, lost in another world for hours on end. A large stack of books was required. With those multiple identities, the local library was my domain to explore.

The summer holidays were a time for indulging in obsessive reading in terms of content as well as quantity; for feasting on books by the same author or sharing the same theme. There was, inevitably, the pony summer. This was filled with the Pullein-Thompson sisters, My Friend Flicka and Ruby Ferguson’s Jill books: Jill and the Perfect Pony, Jill Has Two Ponies, Jill Enjoys Her Ponies. Titles were not Ferguson’s strong suit, but her books were manna to a pony-mad little girl. Noel Streatfeild also made an appearance around this time, not just with Ballet Shoes, White Boots and Tennis Shoes but also the Gemma series and Apple Bough.

Another August was full of crime – the golden age of whodunnits, from Agatha Christie to Dorothy L Sayers. Given that Sayers spent the latter part of her life living in a cottage almost next door to my local library, it was guaranteed to stock every one of her books. The ensuing crush on Lord Peter Wimsey could therefore be easily fuelled.

Adventures were experienced vicariously through stories of children also on summer holidays but inexplicably allowed roam free – camping wild on beds of springy heather on Kirrin Island before exploring old tin-mines and solving mysteries. Further from home, Willard Price’s books (recently feted on here by David Barnett) opened up the natural world, while Little House on the Prairie took me to the 19th-century American midwest, a place as remote from my everyday existence as any world conjured by Alan Garner (yes, there was a Weirdstone fantasy summer, too).

Summer holidays were also a time for series. Ideally these would be read back-to-back – although finding that the library only had the first (or more annoyingly, the second) in a series, with the rest needing to be ordered for the cost of a notification-postcard stamp and a fortnight’s wait, was frustrating. None the less, a quick ask around reveals that tackling a series over summer was common for bookish children back then. Sarah Crown remembers her The Dark Is Rising summer, as does Justine Jordan, while blogger of this parish Sam Jordison recalls reading The Lord of the Rings. Twice. When else in your life are you ever going to have the chance to do that?

And that’s what makes this time so precious, from the age of intense independent reading – say seven or eight – until your mid-teens, when summer jobs (and possibly, for the more socially adjusted book-nerd, an independent social life) start impinging. During this period, you possess both the time to read – those hours and hours to occupy before bedtime – and a certain open-mindedness, a freedom from any awareness of how books are labelled (Enid Blyton? Why not. The Three Investigators? Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew? Bring it on!). What does “genre” mean to a 10-year-old, after all? Let loose in the library as a child, I had no sense there were books I “should” have been reading – only that there were whole new worlds out there just waiting to be discovered by opening the pages of a novel. So tell me: which books filled your summers as a child?

We asked our bike bloggers and Twitter followers to suggest cycle-themed books to read on your holidays. Here’s the best of the bunch

Whether your summer break is an epic two-wheeled trek on a rugged tourer kitted out with fully loaded panniers, or a relaxing week lying on the beach, you may be pondering your holiday reading. We’ve asked regular Guardian bike bloggers plus @james_randerson and @guardianeco’s combined Twitter followers for their favourite books on cycling. Here are the results:

It’s All About The Bike, by Robert Penn

Warning: do not even casually flick through this book if you have promised your significant other that you will not be cluttering up the garage/shed/landing/bedroom with any more bloody bikes. Reading how Penn, a lawyer-turned-journalist, travels the world to build his dream bike, will make it also seem your destiny to own a completely customised machine. I only started this the other day after watching the BBC4 tie-in, and already my two off-the-peg bikes have lost their lustre. The book’s concept might seem a bit of a gimmick, but Penn uses his own personal mission as a peg on which to hang a fascinating history of two-wheeled travel.

(Recommended by Helen Pidd, author of Bicycle - the complete guide to everyday cycling, published by Penguin).

The Yellow Jersey, by Ralph Hurne

Probably the best novel about the Tour de France, a racy (if somewhat politically incorrect, as suggested by one particular paperback cover) account of an ageing pro who saddles up for one last go at the Tour. Out of print but to be found on used book sites.

(Recommended by William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling columnist - author of Roule Britannia: A History of Britons in the Tour de France)

Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force, by Dan Coyle

Insiders account of a year with Lance Armstrong, with the amusing twist that Coyle proves immune to the Armstrong-as-modern-day-saint hype. Marketed in the US as Lance Armstrong’s War, which is a more accurate reflection of the content.

(Recommended by William Fotheringham)

The Great Bike Race, by Geoff Nicholson

Out of print but still the best account of the Tour’s history and culture to be found. Gently humourous sports writing of the highest quality.

(Recommended by William Fotheringham)

Flying Scotsman, by Graeme Obree

The rawest and most human autobiography in cycling, produced without the help of a ghost-writer. The story of one of the sport’s most radical thinkers, his fight against blinkered officialdom, his rise to break world records and take world titles, and the depression that led him to several suicide attempts.

(Recommended by William Fotheringham)

In Pursuit of Stardom: Les Nomades du Velo Anglais, by Tony Hewson

Gentle, amusing portrait of British cycling’s heroic era in the 1950s, when road racers inspired by the British League of Racing Cyclists crossed the Channel to France, hoping to make their fortunes, and rarely succeeding. Tony Hewson got to start the Tour but never got round it, and still captures the time perfectly.

(Recommended by William Fotheringham)

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France, by Tim Moore

A cycling novice takes on a bonkers task: riding around France, loosely based on the Tour route. Moore has no inhibitions about his own failings and unlike others who use the “I” word to destruction, he gets away with it because his sense of humour never flags.

(Recommended by William Fotheringham)

Suggestions from Twitter

@StuartMayell

Finished We Were Young and Carefree by Laurent Fignon. Searingly honest. Thanks William Fotheringham for translation. Chapeau!

Tomorrow we ride by Jean Bobet. In search of Robert Millar by Richard Moore. The Escape Artist by @mattseaton.

Paris-Roubaix: A journey through Hell

Death of Marco Pantani, by Matt Rendell

Saving possibly the best to last. The brilliant French Revolutions by Tim Moore. “Pour mes enfants!”

@onthebummel

Essential reading is surely JK Jerome’s 3 men on the Bummel

@WilmaSpud

Velo-Bicycle Culture and Design-R. Klanten,S. Ehmann

@Fixedfun (David Dansky)

I love; The Rider by Tim Krabbe, BIKE CULT David Perry, Cyclecaft, John Franklin, The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brian

@Mr_Andrew_Smith

John Franklin’s “Cyclecraft” - the definitive guide to road cycling - the utility cyclist’s bible

@JSheppers (Jane Shepley) and @ThirdSectorLab (Ross McCulloch)

Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance, Lennard Zinn

@markbikeslondon

Bicycle by Helen Pidd, and the new eBook from London Cyclist Guide to Cycling in London

@stuartmillar159 - Guardian online news editor

Recommends Tim Dawson’s cycling books website plus facebook group

And finally, if you can’t find anything you like from that lot, there are more suggestions on the Guardian’s bike podcast from January. Plus we’d love to hear more of your favourites in the comments below or using the #bikebooks hashtag on twitter.

Happy riding – and reading!

John Makinson says that if people want to read using new technology, that’s what publishers must give them

Penguin this week celebrates its 75th year and is marking the anniversary by repackaging a series of seminal books from the 1960s to the 1980s. Although the company might afford itself a brief look backwards, it feels as though there is little room for nostalgia in book publishing now, as the industry turns its face firmly – and apprehensively – to the future.

Amazon last week announced sales of ebooks on its US site had outnumbered hardbacks for the first time, stunning casual observers, even if it had not been entirely unexpected in the trade.

The launch of the iPad has added a sense of urgency. Where music went first, books are set to follow, although Penguin and other publishers would hope without the same devastating effects. Amazon this week launched a cheaper, more lightweight version of its Kindle ebook reader and a digital store on its UK site, while others, including Google, are muscling in. Digital book sales are still less than 1% of Penguin, but the direction of the market is clear. In the US, digital books already account for 6% of consumer sales.

Penguin chief executive John Makinson says he is a convert. The day after we meet he is on his way to India, as part of David Cameron’s delegation, and had loaded titles on to his iPad, including a manuscript by John le Carré and some Portuguese classics (in English) ahead of Penguin launching a range in Brazil. He is also reading Lord Mandelson’s diary. It simply makes sense, he says, instead of carting an armful of books in your carry-on luggage.

Innovation

“It does redefine what we do as publishers and I feel, compared with most of my counterparts, more optimistic about what this means for us,” he says. “Of course there are issues around copyright protection and there are worries around pricing and around piracy, royalty rates and so on, but there is also this huge opportunity to do more as publishers.”

Publishing, he says, must embrace innovation: “I am keen on the idea that every book that we put on to an iPad has an author interview, a video interview, at the beginning. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not. There has to be a culture of experimentation, which doesn’t come naturally to book publishers. We publish a lot of historians, for example. They love the idea of using documentary footage to illustrate whatever it is they’re writing about.”

The very definition of a book is up for grabs he says, although the company has just published a version of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth for the iPad in the US that might provide clues – and horrify traditionalists. It includes scenes from a TV adaptation embedded in the text, as well as extras including the show’s music soundtrack and Follett’s video diary during the making of the series.

For now, Makinson says, digital books are expanding the market; hardback sales in the US are up this year, despite the march of ebooks. Piracy is not yet a significant issue and lessons have been learned from the music business.

“You have to give the consumer what the consumer wants – you can’t tell the consumer to go away. So we didn’t participate in this experiment where a number of publishers deferred publication of the ebook until a certain number of months after the hardcover publication. I thought that was a very bad idea. If the consumer wants to buy a book in an electronic format now, you should let the consumer have it.”

He has added confidence, because with tablets such as the iPad, consumers are used to paying a subscription to the wireless operator and for “apps”, creating a more benign environment than the wild west of the PC, where users are used to getting everything for free.

Penguin’s profits more than doubled to £44m in the first half of the year. The company gained market share, but one reason for the dramatic improvement was the outsourcing of some design and production to India last year; the company now has around 100 designers in Delhi making books for Dorling Kindersley, belying the idea that Britain can at least live off its creative industries. Makinson defends the decision and says DK is now back in profit, which means it can reinvest in Britain: “We can’t pretend we can do everything here. In order to be internationally competitive, some work needs to be done in other places.”

About 8% of the publisher’s sales are from its classics, including Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and revenues are still growing, despite much of the copyright being in the public domain. It is launching the range in Mandarin, Korean and Portuguese. But it is not all highbrow. What would Penguin’s founder, Sir Allen Lane, whose aim was to publish quality paperbacks for the masses, have made of Penguin putting out books “by” Peter Andre or Ant & Dec?

“Allen Lane’s view was that we should publish good writing of all kinds for all audiences at affordable prices,” Makinson says. “I’m not saying he would necessarily have approved every single publishing decision we take, but would he have approved of Penguin being a very democratic publishing company, publishing for lots of different tastes? I think he would definitely have approved.”

Makinson has long been mentioned as a successor to Dame Marjorie Scardino, who runs Pearson, Penguin’s parent company. Her departure has been a perennial question, though she has defied the investment community’s chattering classes by staying in her post for well over a decade. She has also confounded expectations by keeping Penguin and the Financial Times in a group dominated by educational publishing. Makinson says it now makes more sense than ever for Penguin to remain part of the group, as the digital era draws each division closer.

He says there will still be the need for publishers in the digital world: “I used to have this discussion with [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author] Douglas Adams. He created this thing called the digital village, an online publishing platform. Douglas’s argument was, ‘all of my friends will come along and publish on digital village and you the publishers will be disintermediated, you will be irrelevant’. Well, it hasn’t happened. I am not aware of any successful direct to consumer publishing model that exists.

“The reason it doesn’t work is that the publishers do actually perform quite a useful service: they edit the book, then they publicise it.” In the physical world, they make sure it is stocked in bookshops, he adds.

Clubbable

Makinson, 55, perhaps feels more adaptable than some of his counterparts because he arrived at Penguin as an outsider. A clubbable character, he has taken an unusual career path, from a journalist on the Financial Times, to working for the Saatchis, setting up his own investment consultancy, running the Financial Times and then becoming Pearson finance director, despite having no training as an accountant.

But his passion for books is evident. Five years ago, he and his brother bought a bookshop in the small Norfolk town of Holt. For an out-of-the-way independent, the Holt Bookshop attracts a starry line-up of authors for events, including Stephen Fry, due to talk about his new autobiography, which, perhaps not surprisingly, is published by Penguin.

“We are all terribly sentimental about books,” Makinson insists. “It is terribly important to me that we sell lots of wonderful books in my little independent in Norfolk, and when I talk about digital I do sometimes worry that it looks as though I am neglecting all this,” he points to the books on the shelves behind him, “which I am not.”

CV

Born: 1954, Derby.

Education: Graduated from Cambridge with honours in English and History.

Career: 1976-1979, journalist, Reuters; 1979-1986, journalist, Financial Times; 1986-1989, vice-chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi; 1989-1994, co-founder of capital markets advisory firm Makinson Cowell; 1994-1996, managing director, Financial Times; 1996-2002, finance director, Pearson; 2002-present, chairman and chief executive Penguin Books.

Other interests: chairman of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a director of the National Theatre and of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organisation.

Family: Married with two daughters.

Self-made Hollywood producer best known for adapting novels

Elliott Kastner, who has died of cancer aged 80, was the model of a film producer, working his way up from the mailroom at the William Morris Agency in New York to Los Angeles, where he joined another powerful talent agency, MCA, in 1959. He soon became vice-president of Universal Pictures, but after two years he risked everything to become an independent producer, a move that paid off.

This achievement required a certain amount of ruthlessness, and Kastner was relentless in his pursuit of getting what he wanted. Mostly he wanted to entice well-known playwrights and novelists to write screenplays, or gain the rights of those works whose authors were no longer around to cajole.

Kastner persuaded William Inge (Bus Riley’s Back in Town, 1965), Iris Murdoch (A Severed Head, 1970), Edna O’Brien (Zee and Co, 1972) and Peter Shaffer (Equus, 1977) to adapt their works for the screen, and got others to deliver screenplays derived from Vladimir Nabokov (Laughter in the Dark, 1969), Henry James (The Nightcomers, 1971), and Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye in 1973, Farewell My Lovely in 1975 and The Big Sleep in 1978).

However, it was the macho adventure novelist Alistair MacLean with whom Kastner had the most affinity and with whom he made the most money, especially with Where Eagles Dare (1968). This big-budget second world war thriller starred Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood as an American major and a US army ranger who, dressed as German soldiers, try to free an American general held prisoner in a mountain castle. Kastner produced three further movies with screenplays by MacLean (When Eight Bells Toll, Fear Is the Key and Breakheart Pass) and four more films starring Burton, including Equus.

Kastner was born in New York. After attending the University of Miami and serving in the army during the second world war, he began his progress through the ranks of show business. His first film as producer, Bus Riley’s Back in Town, did not bode too well. Inge, whom Kastner had persuaded to adapt his play about a young serviceman (portrayed in the film by Michael Parks) who returns home after three years to find many things changed, objected to the film’s shift in focus from the hero to his girlfriend, played by Ann-Margret, whom Universal Pictures wanted to showcase. As a result, Inge insisted on being credited as Walter Gage.

Kastner’s next film, The Moving Target (1966), released in the US as Harper, was one of his greatest successes. Adapted by William Goldman from a detective novel by Ross Macdonald, it starred Paul Newman as the private eye Harper. It was the first of 11 movies which Kastner co-produced with Jerry Gershwin. Most of their films – minor mainstream productions with international casts – came in within budget and made back the investment.

Among Kastner’s clever moves was signing the novelist Thomas McGuane to write two screenplays for him, Rancho Deluxe (1975), starring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston, and The Missouri Breaks (1976), although both of these offbeat westerns received mixed reviews.

In order to get Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson to sign up for The Missouri Breaks, he told both of them that the other had committed. The making of the film was often derailed by Brando’s frequent changes to the text and his eccentric character, played with a broad Irish brogue. Kastner was also executive producer on McGuane’s one attempt at directing, 92 in the Shade (1975), which flopped resoundingly. But the constantly good-humoured Kastner always treated triumph and disaster just the same, and there were plenty of both in his career.

Angel Heart (1987) and Homeboy (1988), the two films Kastner produced starring Mickey Rourke, could be counted as triumphs, mainly because of the actor’s powerful performances as a private eye and a washed-up boxer respectively. Of Homeboy, Bob Dylan recounted in his Chronicles that “the movie travelled to the moon every time Rourke came on to the screen. Nobody could hold a candle to him.”

Kastner, who settled in London in the late 70s, where he had an office at Pinewood studios, was married and divorced twice. He is survived by a son, Dillon, a daughter, Milita, and three stepchildren, Cassian, Damian and Cary.

• Elliott Kastner, film producer, born 7 January 1930; died 30 June 2010

Late-flowering writer of biographies and children’s books

Verily Anderson, who has died aged 95, published more than 30 books – memoirs, biographies, children’s stories and work ranging from personal reminiscences to Shakespeare scholarship and 10 Brownie books. She was a late starter: her breakthrough as a writer came in 1956, at the age of 41, when she published Spam Tomorrow, a deft and frequently uproarious account of her wartime experiences on the home front. Critics hailed it as a new kind of memoir, one of the first to explore the lives of women in wartime.

Before the success of Spam Tomorrow, she led a life that was colourful but frequently impecunious. Born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, the fourth of five children of the Rev Rosslyn Bruce and his wife Rachel (nee Gurney), Verily was always certain that she wanted to be a writer. As children, she and her brothers edited and wrote a nursery magazine which they called the News of the World. Verily’s haphazard schooling ranged from a few years at Edgbaston high school for girls to being taught at home by her mother, to a brief and unsuccessful stint at the Royal College of Music in London. She said she worked at “100 different jobs” (including writing advertising copy, illustrating sweet papers and working as a chauffeur) before the outbreak of the second world war, when she enlisted with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, on the grounds that if there were going to be a war, it would be “less frightening to be in the middle of things”.

During the war she met Donald Anderson, a writer who specialised in military history. They married in 1940 and had five children. With his encouragement, she made a precarious living as a freelance writer, while papering her lavatory walls with rejection slips received from publishers for her book projects. Her persistence was at last rewarded with the success of Spam Tomorrow – and a further half-decade on the bestseller lists. These years included a film adaptation of her 1958 memoir, Beware of Children, called No Kidding and starring Leslie Phillips and Geraldine McEwan (1960).

Donald died in 1956, and by the mid-60s Verily was again struggling financially. She was rescued by the actor Joyce Grenfell. They had struck up a friendship when Verily interviewed Grenfell for the BBC. Grenfell was so shocked at the conditions she found Verily living in that she bought her a home in Northrepps, a village in Norfolk, where she stayed for the rest of her life, writing dozens more books (including the critically acclaimed The Northrepps Grandchildren in 1968) and glorying in the role of matriarch to an ever-expanding family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When Verily married Paul Paget, architect and surveyor to the fabric of St Paul’s Cathedral, in 1971, Grenfell was matron of honour.

In 2008 I conducted what turned out to be Verily’s last interview. Letting myself in after some fruitless bell-ringing, I followed the sounds of a piano to her study door. “Oh my dear,” she said, looking up at my knock. “There you are. Now – shall we have a gin, before we start?”

I had already heard all about Verily through her daughter, my friend the writer Janie Hampton, and so had a good idea what to expect. Janie’s main piece of advice on hearing that we were going to meet was: “Whatever you do, don’t let her pick you up from the station – she’s half-blind.” She also said: “Don’t eat any of the cake she offers. She’s always got some, and it’s always about five weeks old.”

Verily did have cake and it was past its best – but Verily definitely was not. She regaled me with anecdotes. I came away with the image of a woman with a twinkle in her eye, who after eight decades of writing was still full of energy and enthusing about her latest project. This – a memoir of the time she spent at Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex, in the 1930s and 40s – was completed the day before she died.

Verily is survived by her children, Marian, Rachel, Eddie, Janie and Alexandra, 16 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren – and Alfie, her beloved RNIB guide-dog.

• Verily Anderson, writer, born 12 January 1915, died 16 July 2010