The Year in Books Review

people. Now it is time for a look at the

books that have topped the bestseller list in 2012, with the

year-end books. -- The Year In Books.

2012, the year JK Rowling reinvented herself as an adult

novelist, E L James Blunt the publishing world that have 50

shades trilogy, which sold and sold it and just get on selling. Fifty

Shades Of Grey started life as any book, and 2012 was the year of the

Kindle and the iPad. Even sales virtually doubled -- ebooks sales

now account for 10% of all books sold. Let's look back over The Year

In Books with the aid of highlights from the news channels meet the

author interviews. Let's begin with a remarkable double. Hilary Mantel

one of the Booker Prize for Bring Up The Bodies, the second book in a

planned trilogy about Henry VIII's great minister, Thomas Cromwell, a

trilogy which began with Wolf Hall, which also won the Booker Prize.

Well, I don't know. You wait 20 years for a Booker Prize... And two

come along at once. When the book was first published, we went to

Cadhay, an Elizabethan manor house near Hilary Mantel's Bevan home, to

meet the author. I had tried to tease a way Cromwell's reputation

from the man himself. It appears to me that bumbles of prejudice have

been handed down the years from one historian to another. And they

eventually flowed out into the popular perception of a man who,

when he appears in fiction and drama, he is always a one-

dimensional, black cloaked villain. And I wanted to lift that black

cloak and see under there. spent much of your career being

written about as a widely admired novelist, a little underrated,

perhaps. Wolf Hall changed that. And you have now made that

transition to a best-selling novelist. How has that changed you?

It is sudden success. It seems strange to me. I sometimes feel

like a cork bobbing on the ocean. But it has not affected my day-to-

day practice as a writer. Every day, when you sit down at your desk, you

are made new. And it does not matter what failures or successes

you have had in the past. All you have to be is that day's work. That

is all you can do it. That is where you should focus your imagination,

and let the rest just happen. There were other fine winners among

the year's crop of literary prizes. Wade Davis won of the Samuel

Johnson Prize for non-fiction for Into The Silence, his extraordinary

account of the failed British attempts to conquer Everest in the

1920s. And Madeleine Miller won the last Orange Prize for Women's

Fiction for The Song Of Achilles. Orange has pulled out after 17

years as sponsor, and next year's prize will be supported by

individual donors, including Joanna Trollope and Cherie Blair. At the

start of the year, there was the Costa Prize, whose five category

winners included two first-time authors with very different day

jobs. Moray Young, whose Blood Red Road won the children's prize, and

Christie Watson, whose tiny sunbirds far away won the First

Novel Prize. I came to the UK to go to drama school. I then worked on

the alternative comedy circuit in the early '80s to get my Equity

card. I then became a tap dancing chorus girl in the West End in

high-society. After that, I retrained as an opera singer, and I

worked on tour with a medium-sized touring company in the UK and

France for six to seven years. I also did some solo work and a bit

of singing teaching. I started writing in 2003. Why? I because I

broke my wrists. I fell off a bus and smashed my head into a wall and

broke both my wrists. It was one of those existential wake-up calls.

Christine Watson is a nurse. People have been very interested in me

being a nurse. But actually, nursing and writing are very

similar creatures. The thing that made me nurse and the thing that

made me write are the same. It has an interest in humanity and what

makes us human beings in life and death and grief and loss. These are

what I focus on in both jobs. Nursing crosses over into my

writing, and writing probably crosses over into my nursing.

Costa book of the Year award went to novelist Andrew Millar the Pure.

It is a prize, which is lovely. I don't think prizes entirely changed

people's lives. I shall go back to Somerset tomorrow and carry on with

the work I was doing. His book is an account based on fact of the

emptying of a medieval cemetery in Paris immediately before the French

Revolution. I obviously don't just want to trade in symbols when I am

writing. It is not some kind of allegory of France before the

revolution. And yet, of course, it is not just that there was this

cemetery which was excavated, which is interesting, but it is also

about when it happened. The clearance was in some way inspired

by new ideas, no thinking -- new thinking, the stubborn fantasy that

we can start again. It was a good year generally for

historical novels. The veteran Thomas Keneally published The

Daughters of Mars, about two Australian Sisters who served as

military nurses in the First World War and much of it is based on fact,

including the sinking of the Dardanelles a hospital ship full of

New Zealand nurses. But Thomas Keneally is quite clear that he is

not writing straightforward history. This is about the horror of

Gallipoli. It is about the Western Front. It is also about some

specific historical events were due likely disguise. For instance, in

the idiom of Gallipoli, your nurses are sunk in a hospital ship. There

was such a ship. How accurate is your account of the sinking of this

ship? Or well, of course, nothing in fiction... Fiction is lies piled

end on end. But the recounting of the sinking of the Archimedes,

would I stole in typical Australian fashion from the New Zealanders, is,

to a considerable part, based on what at the Young Women wrote about

their survival. And yet I feel licensed to go beyond that and give

them reactions, give them subtleties of feeling that are not

recorded in the journals. We spoke to contemporary novelists, too,

like Ian Rankin, whose latest book sees the return of Inspector Rebus,

now retired, sent by his author on a road trip to the north of

Scotland, a maverick as ever. almost like a private eye within

the police force. He is never happy to be part of a police inquiry. He

is not happy being a small cog in a big machine. He wants to be off on

a tangent, killing his own thing, running his own investigation

within the police investigation. That makes him more like a private

eye. The fun thing about not being a cop is that he can break the

rules a bit more than would be allowed as a police officer.

there was that case in Swindon not long ago with a murderer who led

the police officers to the graves of his victims, and yet they could

not convict him on that evidence because it had been improperly

gathered. That has brought out an interesting debate. There was a lot

of support for that police officer. A lot of the time when the police

officer does not follow the rules, we disapprove. But this time, he

got a result. It was not like he was roughing this guy up or

anything you would see in Life On Mars. It was none of that, it was

just driving the guy about, talking to him, making sure he was

comfortable and unappealing the layers of the onion until he felt

the need to confess. That Cobb did the right thing.

Political memoirs do not often make great literature, but the best can

be both inspiring and engrossing. Mary Robinson was Ireland's first

female President and later a controversial UN High Commissioner

The island I will be representing is a new Ireland - open, tolerant,

inclusive. The job is little more than symbolic. Did you find that

frustrating? I found it intriguing. It was much more tangible before,

but Hira was now having made a solemn promise that I would make it

a more relevant role, and I had to do it. It was a lonely period.

lot of it seemed to have been about should you shake hands with Gerry

Adams, the Dalai Lama, General Pinochet? Why you're a natural

diplomat? Does that kind of thing come easily to you? I think I am a

mixture of a diplomat and a passionate human rights person and

quite a steely character. Those three are combined in different

ways. It was difficult to go to republican west Belfast, but I

wasn't going to shake the hand of Gerry Adams. But he was going to be

there. He was, and they couldn't have a relationship with those

communities unless I respected where they were coming from and

their leader. And so I did shake his hand, off the camera, but that

is what the press were interested in. And I was heavily criticised.

But I knew I had done the right thing. There are some moments in

your life, very rare and very special, the sheer joy and sense of

freedom, since a recognition, it was unbelievable. Something had

changed in that hall in Belfast for those communities, and they would

never go back. They belonged in a way that was very special.

surge in sales of eBooks was driven as much as anything by it EL

James's 50 shades Trilogy, a mix of Mills & Boon with added sex and

bondage. Between them, the three books have sold almost 10,000 --

10.5 million copies alone. The books' worldwide success seems to

have left the author dumbfounded, judging by this interview with Will

Gompertz. It all seems to have happened to somebody else. I still

put washing in the washing machine, make sure the children are fed,

that sort of thing. And that is the reality. The phenomenon even for a

time eclipsed JK Rowling's Harry Potter, but she came back strongly

with the publication of The Casual Vacancy, her long awaited much-

hyped debut as an adult novelist. Critics weren't entirely convinced

by the book, set in a dysfunctional English country town, but as the

author told Will Gompertz, she was always clear in her own mind what

she was doing. This is the thing I wanted to write next. I had the

idea for it, I knew I would love to write it. So that is where it all

started. Why was it the thing you wanted to write next? It plays into

certain themes in my life, it is quite a personal book, these things

are think about a lot. It is personal in a sense that it deals

with broad themes that have affected my life in a very real

sense. Other children's authors, no matter how successful, have always

envied JK Rowling's sales. Eoin Colfer published Artemis Fowl many

years ago, and this year he published his last book about his

criminal mastermind. We got the new Harry Potter, and we

came along and did the interview. Ever since, you have been declared

to JK Rowling, and your protagonist compared to Harry Potter. Did that

annoy you? After a while I realised that it has done me nothing but

good. Yes, I will have to bear the comparison. I once said that if JK

Rowling is the Beatles, then I am the Rolling Stones. I also said

that if JK Rowling is Madonna, then I am the Spice girls. I am Emerald

Spice. We spoke to several fine children's writers. Michael

Morpurgo took Matthew Stadlen to Devon to see the lush countryside

that inspired his bestseller the War Horse. Since adapted for stage

and screen. My teacher used to point at me and say, use your

imagination, Michael! I was hopeless at using my imagination

until I discovered that all stories that any good come from the real-

life stories around us. And it is from real life, whether my own life

or the lives of other people or stories that I hear on the bus, it

is from real life that my imagination makes the play and then

makes a stories. Effective you what I'd do is, I dream when I am awake,

so the stories begin to each other weaving to reach other, and become

a story of my own. It is what you're always told not to do at

school. Don't look out of the window and dream, wrong. It is a

really good thing to do. Michael Rosen, a former children's laureate,

has written a book for children about one of the greatest

children's writers of the last century, Roald Dahl. In all his

books, he knew that in order to engage the sympathy of the child,

in order for the child actually care about what happens, you have

to see the world from the child's pointed view, and a lot of my work

is about looking at myself the way I walls and looking at the world

through those eyes. It is like putting on a pair of glasses from

my childhood. And Philip Pullman reworked Grimm's Fairy Tales from

modern readership. What I have done in my telling us to put it into my

voice. This is the way I would tell it if I were telling it orally, a

think. But also, I felt able, licence, allowing to add a little

bit here, cut a little bit there, paper over a join. I felt I could

tinker with them in a way that I would do again if I were telling it.

Because in Cinderella, you have added the detailed that she goes to

the ball on three consecutive nights, each night wearing a

different dress. Yes, for the British version called Mossycoat, a

marvellous version. I borrowed that detail, because I thought that

The year's crop of authors included plenty of eccentrics, and we met a

few on the news channel. There was the poet Simon Armitage, whose

walking home chronicled his attempt to walk the length of the Pennine

Way, giving nightly poetry readings as he went to earn his living.

You set out without any money except a one-way ticket to Scotland,

and you end literally to sink your supper by giving poetry readings

every evening. That was quite a brave thing to do. I suppose I was

testing my reputation as a poet amongst the small villages and

communities up in the north Pennines. And also may be testing

poetry's reputation in general, whether people would turn out on a

wet Wednesday to hear me read, and to see if I could make a living as

an old fashioned troubadour. did they come? They came, yes.

did you make a living? I thought it was a decent living, but it was

just slightly less than the minimum wage when I added it up, so it is

not a career path. Is a new Simon Armitage poet emerging from this?

That might be the case. Increasingly, I spend time in

places like this. I grew up on the periphery of the moors, but tended

to spend time in towns and cities. I gravitate towards these places

now, and it might be that my poetry goes in the same direction. Because

your poems do appear in the hills. You have written another -- and

number of poems that have been inscribed on stones up here. He yes,

of what they call Stanza Stones, and they are dotted around. They

are there forever, or at least long after me. Another eccentric was the

art critic Brian Sewell, the second volume of whose memoirs contain a

revelation of interest to students of espionage. It concerned his old

teacher and close friend, Anthony Blunt, unmasked in 1979 as a Soviet

spy. Brown's your claims he had been told of Blunt's secret life

some years before. He came to Cambridge to talk to an old friend

and mentor called Andrew Garos. And I went. And Andrew Garos began his

tail by saying, Anthony wishes you to know... And then told me what

everybody now knows about the links with Burgess and Maclean and Philby

and whatnot. So did he say in terms, Anthony has in the past fed secrets

to Russia? No, certainly not. But if you were given that information,

that was the only conclusion you can draw. But he left the

conclusion-drawing to me. And you believe that Andrew Garos was

blunt's mentor and may have recruited him? I do. I see no

reason why that should not be the case. That would make him a very

successful spymaster, because he was never unmasked. Do you really

believe that every spymaster in the country is unmasked? It is much

more likely that there are a dozen of them who have not been unmasked.

That is the point of espionage! The point of espionage is not at the

end of everything to some may create a scandal in the Sunday is

to remain what you will already The year also saw the 30th

anniversary of the Falklands war, recalled by Tony Banks in storming

the Falklands. He fought in the Parachute Regiment, and after the

war left the army to set up a successful care home business in

Scotland. These days he campaigns on behalf of the many veterans

suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I was I naive

young man when I went to the Falklands. I was a fighting fit

soldier, enjoying my life in the army. I was somebody who thought he

had trained for a job he would never do. I was a fun-loving young

buck, basically. And when you find yourself doing that job, and it was

a pretty tough job, wasn't it? It was an old-fashioned war, infantry

battles, close-quarter fighting, and you saw some terrible things?

Absolutely. We used fixed bayonets. Nobody had had those since the

Second World War. We were an elite regiment, a brand in our own right.

And I always believed we would, it successfully in anything we did.

However, I was unprepared for the brutality of war, of losing

comrades or seeing death and destruction and despair. They get

the impression that the most terrible things you saw were at

Bluff Cove and Fitzroy, when the Sir Galahad was bombed by Argentina.

We had always prepared for things like bullet wounds and blast

injuries. But what we weren't prepared for was horrific burns.

That was something that will stay with me for the rest of my days.

You came back from the Falklands, and you were affected. A lot of

guys went completely off the rails, cracked up totally. You, on the

other hand, didn't. He went on to be very successful and build a

large successful business. Why didn't you go the way of some

others? I could lock it away and forget it, where some individuals

cannot do that. It then becomes a downward spiral, where it is

constantly on their mind, and then it manifests itself in alcoholism,

criminality, drugs. The highlight of the summer, of

course, was the London 2012 Olympics, and just before the start

of the Games, I spoke to Chris Cleave, whose latest novel, Gold,

looks at what it takes to become a champion Olympic cyclist. I think

there are two kinds of athlete. There are the kind to consider the

job at least temporarily done when they cross the finish line, and

will limit the scope of their competitiveness to the competition

itself, and then I think there is another kind an athlete who never

goes off duty, who never stops fighting a psychological battle

against rivals, now and in the future. And a thing as a

storyteller, we are always fascinated by the people we are not.

I wake up every day in thin, who can I imagine myself being today?

And these characters, who just have this visceral need to win, began to

really intrigued me. I started to wonder, what are they feel like

when they do win? Isn't that enough? They stand on a podium,

what are they thinking? Are they thinking, this is my moment, I am

happy now, or rather a projecting strength while on the podium,

working out who to be next. So that was 2012, and next year

promises more treats. New novels from Tracy Chevalier and Kate

Atkinson, Jeffrey Archer and James Patterson. Two biographies of