TV books programmes: if nobody watches them, make better ones

The novelist Robert Harris was right to call the BBC’s lack of a books show a ‘disgrace’. There’s plenty the corporation could do to make a popular literary programme on TVWith injury, there is always a little insult. When a BBC spokesperson, responding to Robert Harris’s complaints at the Costa book of the year ceremony about the absence of a dedicated book show on its television channels, pointed out that the corporation was responsible for introducing readers to books by way of adaptations such as Wolf Hall and The Casual Vacancy, one might feel that Harris’s comments – in which he called the absence of a BBC TV books show an ‘absolute disgrace’ – had been somewhat misunderstood.While Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling, their publishers, agents and the book industry doubtless benefit from book adaptations, the BBC’s motive in putting them on is not altruistic. It does not broadcast these adaptations to benefit poor, garret-bound writers, nor because it thinks the publishing industry is struggling to connect with potential readers, nor because it worries that amid the hubbub of rapid-fire entertainment opportunities, the novel is becoming marginalised. It does it because the best novels - whether classic or contemporary, comic or tragic, philosophical or political or romantic - are masterpieces of narrative and entertainment. The BBC is in the debt of writers of such novels as Parade’s End, Mapp and Lucia, South Riding, Death Comes to Pemberley and The Night Watch for... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2015-01-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #casual vacancy #hilary mantel #jk rowling #publishing industry #potential readers #night watch

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Big Books the U.S. Agencies Are Selling at the Fair: Frankfurt Book Fair 2014

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-09-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Books & Booze, Book Promotion Forum Merge

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Nielsen Book: Total book market declined 4% in 2013

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[ The Bookseller | 2014-07-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Schuler Books Acquires Nicola's Books

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The TV news where you are is not the TV news where we are...

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[ The Guardian | 2014-06-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Children’s Books Ireland Awards: “Hagwitch” Takes Book of the Year

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Eight Great Books About Comic Books

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London Book Fair 2014: At Digital Minds, Publishers Urged to Look Beyond the Book

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-04-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2014-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin Books India pulls controversial book on Hinduism

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