The Guardian's Blog, page 231

What are your favourite non-fiction books from childhood?

Which non-fiction books do you remember from your younger days? Let's get nostalgic

Is the internet killing children's non-fiction? As children's authors call for publishers and libraries to keep faith with facts, we're reflecting on the titles from yesteryear which brought children a world of discovery.

So tell us: which non-fiction books did you enjoy as a child? Was it Anne Frank's Diary, or the Guinness Book of Records, Gombrich's Little History of the World or a favourite encyclopedia? All reminiscences in the thread below, please.

Non-fiction (children and teens)Children and teenagersPublishingLibrariesSchools
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Reader reviews roundup

This week: Attica Locke, Michael Connelly and the first verdicts on JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy

So much for journalistic competition: even as we were racing into print with our review of JK Rowling's debut for adults, The Casual Vacancy, our readers were with us neck and neck. First to the post was DrRatanBhattacharjee, who was not overly impressed by a "dark comedy with occasional elements of fun interspersed with suicide, cruel activities and even online pornography described in gynaecological detail." Less than four hours later, Jane Mccourt followed with a more indulgent review: "This novel accurately reflects elements of our society and psyches which demand reflection," she writes.

Also quick off the mark was Christopher Philip Howe, who pipped Val McDermid, and this week's books podcast, with his review of Attica Locke's new thriller The Cutting Season. Though he felt she occasionally tries too hard, he was impressed by many aspects of Locke's story of crime in the canefields of America's deep south:

It undoubtedly falls within the crime fiction genre – it is the first title in the Dennis Lehane crime imprint at HarperCollins – but it comes with a serious take on slavery and immigration in American history and culture, and a quality and style of writing that puts it firmly in the "literary" canon.

Whether the same could be said of Michael Connelly's Mullholland Dive is a moot point, judging by Lakis's review of this story collection.

"I'm a big fan of Michael Connelly," he writes, "and as such I guess I should wear a kind of blindfold when it comes to his work, but alas that is not the case ... in my humble opinion, Mulholland Dive is not as good as his two previous three-story ebook collections, Suicide Run and Angle of Investigation."

Oh well. As any good criminal lawyer could tell you, some you win, some you lose.

And that's all for this week. If I've mentioned your review, drop me an email at claire.armitstead@guardian.co.uk, and I'll send you something thrilling from our books cupboard.

FictionJK RowlingCrime fictionClaire Armitstead
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From Lestat to Harry Potter: which characters should be resurrected?

As Anne Rice and JK Rowling tease fans about bringing back two much-loved characters, are there any fictional heroes you'd like to see return to the page?

Anne Rice has been teasing fans of her creation, the vampire Lestat, asking them on Facebook, "If you want Lestat to come back, can you tell me why in one sentence?", and provoking a frenzy of excitement. I'm not, other than in the case of Interview with the Vampire, a reader of the Vampire Chronicles, but many, many are – and obsessively so, at least judging by the 8,000-plus comments on Rice's Facebook page.

"Because he is far too spectacular to not introduce to the new generation," writes one fan. "To remind Stephenie Meyer and her legion of idiot fans how vampires should be done," says another. And, rather poignantly, "So that this disgusting world has some light return to it."

No word yet as to whether the outpouring of love will prompt Rice to return to the world of Lestat, and what she'd do with him if she did. I'm loathe to mention JK Rowling, because I am thoroughly Casual Vacancy-ied out, but she did a similar thing to her equally die-hard fans yesterday, telling them that there was a possibility she might go back to Harry Potter at some unspecified point in the future.

I, meanwhile, am still reeling from my return to the world of Colin, the child protagonist of Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath novels, in Boneland. Very much a book for adults, Boneland is bemusing and brilliant – like Ursula Le Guin, I'm still not quite sure I've worked out what was going on. It's a discombobulating, disturbing experience, going back to a character you'd adored as a child to see them as a thoroughly damaged adult, and I don't believe anyone other than Garner would have taken the route he does.

But anyway, attempts to get to the bottom of Boneland aside, are there any beloved characters you'd like to see return to the page? I'm not suggesting we take up Annie Wilkes-style campaigns to bring them back, but perhaps a gentle groundswell of opinion might help ...

I'm going to start the ball rolling with an appeal for Philip Pullman to get a move on and finish The Book of Dust because, well, Lyra is just so very excellent. What about you?

Anne RiceFictionJK RowlingVampires (children and teens)Harry PotterPhilip PullmanAlison Flood
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Why book bloggers are critical to literary criticism

Booker prize head judge Peter Stothard says book blogs harm literature, but a blog can explore a work at length and give coverage to books other than the newly published

Yesterday Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement and chair of the judges for this year's Man Booker prize, hit out at book bloggers. The rise of blogs will, he says, be "to the detriment of literature". They are in competition with "traditional, confident criticism" and the end result will be that "people will be encouraged to buy and read books that are no good, the good will be overwhelmed, and we'll be worse off". Who is the we to whom he refers? And is he right? Are bloggers merely self-published critics, facing as much of an uphill battle for respect as self-published authors? Are they insufficiently authoritative and rigorous, too in thrall to the latest book-with-buzz, too easily swayed by publicists' puff?

He's got a point. Anyone can start a blog. Bloggers are not commissioned, not edited, don't have to be good enough at it to earn money from it. But these are strengths as well as weaknesses: no limitations based on what a literary editor has space for, or a taste for; no need to turn them out at a certain rate to earn a living; and they must earn their own readership, with no support structure. The expected response to Stothard's comments would be: Of course there are inessential blogs, just as there are inessential literary critics. Hasn't he heard of Sturgeon's Law? But Stothard seems to reject that too: "Not everyone's opinion is worth the same. [A]s much as one would like to think that many bloggers' opinions are as good as others. It just ain't so."

I wonder, then, if Stothard can have read This Space by Steve Mitchelmore (Britain's first book blogger), or Mark Thwaite's ReadySteadyBook (which carried the best critical response to Enrique Vila-Matas's novel Dublinesque that I saw, online or off), or Max Cairnduff's Pechorin's Journal, or Kevin from Canada, or dozens of others that I visit regularly. Here are skilled reviewers offering thoughtful, informed criticism of a wider range of books than any traditional literary publication. What blogs can give readers is a sense of trust that, in professional circles, only the biggest lit-crit names – such as James Wood or Michiko Kakutani – can attain: a "criticism with personality". They are expressing opinions about books in particular, and literature in general, based on a particular life of reading, written in a critical but non-technical language. What they can also give, crucially, is attention to books other than the newly published.

I have an interest here, as I too run a blog, but I don't feel myself to be naturally in opposition to Stothard. I agree with his comments in support of his panel's Booker shortlist: "If the English novel does nothing to renew the English language, then it really doesn't do anything. The great works of art have to renew the language in which they're written. They have to offer a degree of resistance." That's why I do my best on my blog to champion books which I think are important because they do make language new, such as Keith Ridgway's Hawthorn & Child or Hugo Wilcken's Colony. These are, typically, books that struggle to attain coverage in the traditional outlets for literary criticism. (Hawthorn & Child got a 350-word "in brief" review in the TLS, a publication which dispensed with its fiction editor last year.)

Also, like Stothard, I worry about the good books being "overwhelmed" by the bad. But it seems to me that this is as likely to happen because of literary critics being required to review the latest title from a big literary name, irrespective of quality, as it is by a book blogger evangelising within their particular niche.

The books that Stothard and I both want to celebrate – those with "extraordinary and exhilarating prose" – tend to come from the edges rather than the centre, and increasingly from small presses. He would surely agree, as his panel has this year chosen a Booker shortlist on which half the titles come from tiny independents: Salt, And Other Stories and Myrmidon. These are the publishers who get more attention from bloggers than they do from the literary press, because a one-person blog has a flexibility and manoeuvrability that larger literary publications lack. When Deborah Levy's Swimming Home, one of the most interesting titles on the shortlist, was published last October, the first national newspaper review, in the Guardian, was by a blogger – me, in fact. Most other papers didn't cover it until it was longlisted for the Booker.

The greatest tool bloggers have at their disposal – to be exercised with caution – is space. Former fiction editor of the TLS, Lindsay Duguid, said that "in a short review, you can probably only get over three points". A blog can explore a book at a length that all but the most prominent literary critics would envy. Today, social networking sites encourage expression to be short and punchy, not balanced and thoughtful. The Man Booker prize this year removed the users' forum from its revamped site, and now limits reader responses to the books to Facebook comments and tweets. In such circumstances, the opportunity that blogs continue to offer for long-form engagement with literature should not be denigrated, but celebrated.

BloggingLiterary criticismBooker prizeJohn Self
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Plenty of big names in for Manchester's Portico Prize

Literary heavyweights including AS Byatt and Jeanette Winterson battle it out for the biennial literary award, hosted by the library once frequented by Elizabeth Gaskell and Eric Cantona. Alan Sykes reports

The biennial Portico Prize for Literature has attracted a heavyweight shortlist this year. With the prize money being more than doubled from £4,000 to £10,000 each for the winners of the fiction and non-fiction sections, previous winners of the Booker and Whitbread prizes are in line for the awards.

Manchester's Portico Library is one of the city's finest – and least known – buildings. Most people walk past its discrete door without realising what lies behind – one of the country's best libraries in a magnificent setting. The slightly austere Ionic columns conceal a beautiful oasis of calm in the bustle of central Manchester, with around 25,000 books, comfortable chairs and excellent coffee and cake.

Sadly, in the 20s they were forced to sell the Adlington Papers, which included over 1500 publications, including many first editions of works by Sheridan and Goldsmith, as well as a 1742 pamphlet providing

A cheap, sure and ready Guide to Health, or a Cure for the Disease called The Doctor, instructing how to prevent being cheated and destroyed by the Exactions and unmerciful usage of ignorant and oppressive Physicians and Apothecaries.

The collection was sold to the Rylands Library, so at least it's still available to the public and still in Manchester.

The Portico's first secretary was Peter Mark Roget, who is thought to have started his Thesaurus in the library. Other famous members included Sir Robert Peel and Eric Cantona.

Mrs Gaskell wrote to Charlotte Brontë in 1859

With a struggle and a fight I can see all he quarterlies three months after they are published; until then they lie on the Portico table for gentlemen to see. I think I will go in for women's RIGHTS.

Her husband William was the Portico's chairman for 30 years.

For this year's Portico Prize, in the fiction section, the shortlist includes AS Byatt for her novel Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, a story about Norse mythology set during World War II, Joan Bakewell for her She's Leaving Home, a novel set in 1960s Liverpool, and previous winner Val McDermid for her 25th detective novel, The Retribution.

In the non-fiction section is Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Simon Armitage's Walking Home, about his trek down the Pennine Way, Henrietta Heald's William Armstrong, Magician of the North and Alan Shelston's Brief Lives: Elizabeth Gaskell.

One of the judges, poet Adam O'Riordan, commented

the Portico embodies a great creative tradition that celebrates creativity outside the capital but also nods to the history of the region, to the Brontës and Dickens.

The Portico Prize is awarded to

the highest quality books set mainly or wholly in the North of England.

Previous winners include Anthony Burgess, Jenny Uglow and the Guardian's own Madeline Bunting. It is supported by the Arts Council of England and the Zochonis Charitable Trust, a Manchester-based charity which last year distributed £3.6m to good causes, including £100,000 to The Big Issue in the North and £250,000 to Manchester Cathedral.

The winners will be announced at a gala awards dinner in Manchester Town Hall on 22 November.

ManchesterJeanette WintersonEric CantonaAlan SykesAS Byatt
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What are you reading today?

Your weekly space to tell us the topics and books we should be talking about on the site, and a preview of the titles we'll be reviewing this week

Here's a roundup of what you were reading last week, and what you thought of your choices:
stpauli:

After finishing the second Western Isles-set crime thriller in Peter May's Lewis trilogy, The Lewis Man, and a vaguely promising but ultimately disappointing 2008 horror novel by Bill Hussey called Through A Glass, Darkly this week, I've just started Jo Walton's Among Others, this year's Hugo and Nebula award-winner. It's brilliant so far. I started reading it while I was waiting at length for my appointment in a hospital waiting room, and I was almost disappointed when the nurse called me in and interrupted my reading. It's funny and sad with a slightly sinister edge, and beautifully written with a distinctive narrative voice.

7sisters:

Am currently reading DreamTigers-Borges translated by Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland and I am swooning with pleasure.

JamesWMoar:

I'm reading the Burton translation of 1001 Nights, and I'm up to volume 9 and about Night 950. The stories themselves are generally fast-paced and entertaining, though by this point a few of the repeated tropes are getting a bit wearing (but then again, a couple of the most recent stories break with those). Burton's translation is enjoyable, mock-archaicisms and all, though I find his attempts to imitate Arabic prose-rhymes annoying, and also cloying, though admittedly not soul-destroying.

And welcome to new TLS member, Stargazers:

I can wholeheartly recommend the book Mindjammer, by Sarah Newton, that has been mentioned by Lioc. It's one of the best Sci-Fi novels I've read in a long time. In my humble opinion Mindjammer is a very exiting and intelligently-written novel that should be on the reading list of every SF fan!

We quite often ignore the links element of TLS, but PaulBowes01 has been sharing some great links I thought were worth repeating, here:

• An interesting article in Salon on the differences in the brain while reading for pleasure versus 'close reading' as practiced by academics.

• Amusing and intelligent blog piece by Dylan Meconis: How Not To Write Comics Criticism. Of course, nobody at The Guardian needs to read this...

• I'd like to add one of my own, too. This link is to the New Yorker's article about JK Rowling's new book, the Casual Vacancy. As well as being a great piece, I'm pointing to it because it also mentions us, the Guardian books community. In fact, it actually does more than just mention us; your comments are the inspiration for the articles headline! If you are reading this @Shatillion; Mugglemarch was a stroke of genius.

Thank you to Ruth Kennedy Gray whose snap of her current reading material is featured at the top of this blog. If you'd like to add your photograph to our What are you reading, today? group, visit our Flickr page.

Now, looking ahead to this week here are some of the books we'll be reviewing and writing about, unless plans change, of course.

Non-fiction:

• Ask a Policeman by Agatha Christie introduced by Martin Edwards
• Edwina Currie Diaries: Volume II
• Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century by James R Flynn
• Philip Gould: An Unfinished Life edited by Dennis Kavanagh
• You Aren't What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture by Steven Poole
• The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
• Thomas Ades: Full of Noises – Conversations with Tom Service by Tom Service and Thomas Ades
• Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity by Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, Elizabeth Truss

Fiction

• The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
• The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi
• In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
• The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
• Light Falling on Bamboo by Lawrence Scott
• The Potter's Hand by AN Wilson

Hannah FreemanGuardian readers
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Disabled writers gave me faith in words

Working early in my career with vulnerable writers, I saw how the arts – like the Paralympics – can release power and status for people whom society was working hard to keep very far from both

I have to say my recent experiences with English conveyancing have made it much clearer why all of you English persons have seemed historically happy to live in a country run by posh boy sociopaths and to have an established church which appears to embrace praying for people in order of social importance as a virtue. Your spirits have been broken by conveyancing. I understand. Ned Ludd, Wat Tyler and the Levellers were worthy exceptions, but mainly you just want to join queues, invent regional dishes and be left alone. Really, I do understand.

I am currently typing in Borrowed Flat Number 5, having lost the flat I was supposedly buying – the owners didn't own it, the solicitors didn't notice – and I am now perhaps almost near owning another, but I hold out no great hopes. I rely on the kindness of strangers – and friends – and cannot overstate how much support and talking-down-off-the-roof that has involved. My faith in human nature is all silky and shiny and may never quite collapse again. And I would recommend to anyone the experience of flat hunting during something of a heat wave and two consecutive major sporting events in an already crowded city. At least, I would recommend it to anyone I didn't like at all in any way.

Having spent my last blog extolling the virtues of focus and of somehow maintaining a tiny eye of peace in life's storms, I have had to live up to my pronouncements while a fair amount of sand has been blown into my tiny eye and it has occasionally been poked with a stick. I've tried to keep on, but serious writing has slowed. I've managed one short story since we last spoke. Among other things, this has reminded me again how much I genuinely, deep-down enjoy writing fiction. I not only miss it when circumstances prevent me from accessing the keyboard in a meaningful way, I actually start to feel quite peculiar as a result. I think this stems from a blend of frustration and professional/financial anxiety and something rather more profound: a sense that without writing, I am mainly at the mercy of my often toxic interior monologue. Writing creatively is so intensely involving that for hour after hour it can completely remove the standard torrent of doubts, fears, gripes, resentments and rubbish which my unattended subconscious delights in manufacturing. After only a few days, I really do long for the kind of meditative absence of self that building fiction can provide.

But I've had more than that to remember and prise me out of my own head. Like many others, I had all kinds of ethical reservations about the Olympics: the sometimes graceless behaviour of Locog, the associated social cleansing of Newham and a number of the Games' chosen sponsors. I watched a little on telly and was only delighted that the multiple, firm decisions of people largely held in contempt by our politicians and large corporations transformed something grasping, paranoid and shoddy into a generous joy. I was shown the effect of excellence, something we're rarely allowed to associate with everyday people, or long-term effort – and, of course, always kept as far as possible from the arts. Then, despite the vilely inappropriate intrusion of Atos, I spent rather more time watching the Paralympics. Many commentators have mentioned how exciting and beautiful it was to see dedicated sportsmen and sportswomen with disabilities being treated like dedicated sportsmen and sportswomen. Which is to say, how great and surprising it was to see our media treating human beings as human beings and allowing them dignity. And how lovely it was to see a new generation of sensible, enthusiastic, well-informed and un-self-obsessed presenters with disabilities appearing in an environment which generally has a problem with such deviations from "normality" as mild cellulite, humility and being over 30.

More specifically, I remembered the first 10 years of my career as a writer, during which I earned my living by working with writers who had what were termed "special needs". As I tried to wrestle my own words on to paper in the evenings and at weekends, I spent my days with human beings who were elderly, who had mobility difficulties, learning difficulties, or visual impairments, who had physical and mental illnesses, who were very young, who were addicts, or who were very poor. At that point, all of them were being punished for their vulnerabilities by the government they could not, in some cases, even have a say in electing. They were often housed in horrible environments with poor resources; they were patronised, ignored and sometimes abused. And yet all of them had – among many other qualities – depths of understanding and words to say: beautiful, funny, troubling, wonderful things to create and offer others. I was young, self-obsessed as only a budding writer can be, and generally panicked about running effective workshops, or trying to overcome the technical difficulties of people with varying barriers between them and the wider expression of themselves. Even so, it was impossible not to notice that something as simple as being heard, being respected, could change someone's life. It was impossible not to realise how much I was being taught while I flailed my way through "teaching". It was impossible not to realise how very tenuous anyone's grip is on "normality" and how briefly any of us will be considered as fully human by the authorities and individuals who are supposed to serve the public. It was impossible not to be disgusted by how often I couldn't really talk about what I did for a living because even the idea of a disabled person troubled those listeners who believed themselves to be without significant handicaps. And it was impossible not to be electrified by how quickly and beautifully writing and the arts in general could release power and status for those who were meant to be kept very far from both.

I'm glad if the Paralympics coverage and its athletes have changed perceptions of people with disabilities. That it was necessary to change those perceptions is profoundly disappointing. And I'm happy to say here – and anywhere else – that disabled writers made me the writer I am today and gave me a faith in words and their potential which doesn't shake, even when everything else is in disarray. They are a way to change worlds. Onwards.

Creative writingFictionParalympics 2012DisabilityAL Kennedy
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Open thread: best crime fiction

Tess Gerritsen and Peter May are among the crime writers recommended by our readers. Who are your favourites, and which are their best books?

In this week's podcast we're concentrating on crime fiction, and we're hoping to include some of your recommendations.

It's a popular genre amongst our reader reviewers. BookWorm2012 was drawn in by P.A. Davies's Letterbox. "I finished reading this book (which I understand is the author's first offering) in 2 days. And why? Because I actually couldn't put it down!"

Tess Garritsen's Last to Die got Lakis's vote. "The plot is great, the characters masterfully drawn, the subject matter difficult and deeply humane."

Stpauli, meanwhile, drew on her own memories to recommend the second book in Peter May's the Lewis Trilogy. "As a regular visitor to the Western Isles, I know most of the locations in The Lewis Man very well, and May seems to have done a great deal of research to make the islands come vividly to life."

What's your favourite crime fiction? The classic whodunnit? Or something even more sinister? Let's have a brainstorm and see what we can come up with.

Crime fiction
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JK Rowling puts Pagford on the literary map

The Casual Vacancy's setting, drawn from JK Rowling's childhood home in the Forest of Dean, can count Hardy's Wessex and Tolkien's the Shire among its literary forebears

It's hard, reading about Pagford, JK Rowling's imaginary small town and the setting for her new novel The Casual Vacancy, not to see it in west country terms, as an elision of two real places: (Newport) Pagnell and Chagford.

It seems that Rowling's Pagford is drawn instead from her childhood home in the Forest of Dean. By the standards of the writer who dreamed up quidditch, Hogwarts, muggles and horcruxes, this is almost wilfully dull.

No doubt that's calculated, but Rowling's Pagford still sponsors thoughts of all those other imaginary towns and houses that form the landscape of the British literary mind – a rich, even exotic territory.

The great age of imaginary places in the UK was the 19th and early 20th centuries. Think Carroll's Wonderland, Anthony Hope's Ruritania and Conan Doyle's Baskerville Hall, along with modern descendants such as – dare I say? – Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey.

English literature, on reflection, is rich in invented locations: More's Utopia, Raleigh's El Dorado, Swift's Lilliput, Stevenson's Treasure Island and Butler's Erewhon. Is this, perhaps, the literary dividend of a seafaring people?

But there's also the influence of "the Greenwood Tree". Later, when so much of Merrie England seemed at risk, JRR Tolkien appropriated the blue remembered hills of middle England in The Hobbit and sounded a plangent, nostalgia chord with the Shire.

Today, when so much of the globe has been explored or Google-mapped, and when so much of everyday existence is captured on CCTV, fictional make-believe cannot turn to magic-carpet travel with quite the same blithe spirit as in yesteryear.

And yet it wasn't always just escapism. There was often a more serious purpose. Utopia is a satirical critique of European society. Some of the great Victorians used imaginary place-names to repossess a familiar landscape on behalf of a literary point of view.

Wessex, for instance, had been King Alfred's kingdom. But Thomas Hardy made Wessex into something else: the setting for a series of ever-darker pastoral meditations, set in and around Casterbridge, Sherston, Egdon Heath and the rest. Did Tolkien, I wonder, borrow the map that accompanied Hardy's novels when he came to work on his tales of Middle-earth?

Imaginary landscapes – and polemical geographies – seem to have fallen out of fashion now. Oddly enough, if there's one writer who might have both the temperament and the gift for such innovation, it must be Rowling. My footnote to The Casual Vacancy, which I have yet to read (it's embargoed until Wednesday), is to express the hope that Pagford is less a final destination, more a way station on the road to some new bookish Shangri-La.

JK RowlingFictionClassicsRobert McCrum
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Irish author describes how Merseyside hospitals saved his life

News from Nowhere launches Liam Ryan's book on fighting cancer. The north west has England's highest head and neck cancer rates but also some of the most innovative and determined treatment. Declan McSweeney reports

A 52-year-old Irish architect, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer ten years ago after a large stage four tumour was found in the middle of his head, has paid unusual tribute to the treatment he received at Merseyside hospitals which saved his life.

Liam Ryan's book Cancer 4 Me 5 received its Liverpool launch at News From Nowhere on Bold Street. The launch came about because one of the shop's own staff, Julie Callaghan, who acted as MC on the night, has herself been treated for head and neck cancer.

Originally from the village of Horseleap, on the border of the counties of Offaly and Westmeath in the Irish midlands, Liam grew up over a pub and shop which literally straddled the county boundary.

His own mother died from cancer when he was 22, and his father died two years later.

Now resident in Ballina/Killaloe in County Tipperary (not to be confused with the much larger Ballina in Mayo), he lived in Liverpool for many years, and it was there that he met his wife Pam, and where two of his three sons were born. He studied at Liverpool John Moores University.

Speaking at the launch, he spoke of the role Liverpool had played in his life and gave thanks for the support he received from so many people, but particularly the treatment he received at Aintree University hospital and at Clatterbridge hospital on the Wirral, as well as the Royal Liverpool hospital.

In his book, he refers to the help his Christian faith gave him in fighting cancer, and points out that while he was a lapsed Catholic in his late teens and early twenties, he returned to the church when he came to Liverpool.

The launch was also addressed by Professor Simon Rogers, a surgeon at Aintree, who paid tribute to Liam Ryan's fighting spirit.

Copies of the book are for sale in News From Nowhere and portion of the proceeds go to the Head and Neck Cancer Support Group. The group is holding a number of events in the near future, with a meeting take place on Friday 5 October at 1.30 pm at Room 2:07, Clinical Science Building, University Hospital, Aintree.

A musical event will be held at Leaf Cafe, 65-67 Bold Street, L1 4EZ, on Friday 26 October. Tickets are £10 or £12 at the door, and musical acts involved are Clockwork Radio, The Tunnels and Crowded Scouse.

Sadly, the north-west has the highest number of people diagnosed with head and neck cancer in England, but the team of experts based at the Mersey Regional Head and Neck Cancer Research Centre are leading the way in novel treatments and clinical trials.

For further information on the group, contact Mike McGovern at mikemcgovern54@aol.com or ring nurses Sally Lane or Lesley Dempsey at (0151)5295256.

LiverpoolIrelandLiverpool John Moores UniversityCancerCancerMedicineNHSMedical researchReligionCatholicism
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