Natasha Kaplinski, my interviewer on BBC News 24 I had a long day of interviews at the Beeb. All of them were about the new law that gives the right for teachers to search pupils for weapons. I was supportive of the law, having searched quite a few bags in my time. First up was…

Finished Marry Me by John Updike today. The book tails off a bit in the last fifty pages, but generally it’s a total winner. Especially after reading the appalling Kiran Desai, Updike’s prose sings. The novel is about two couples having adulterous affairs with each other. It’s a lyrical but very funny book, and never…

So I am sitting in a Channel 5 Studio, make up on, mic trailing underneath my shirt, ready to talk with Jellyellie (yes, we met again today) about teenagers when we are asked to leave the studio before the cameras rolled. There was a more important news story, and we weren’t needed. I talked to…

Tried reading the Booker prize winning novel, The Inheritance Of Loss, and had to give up because it’s so poorly written: episodic, unengaging, and predictably politically correct. My feelings were confirmed when I listened to her reading at Bookslam: she read a passage from the novel about an Indian working in a restaurant in New…

Appeared on four radio shows today. Sitting in a lonely, sealed-off room in the far reaches of Broadcasting House, I spoke through the microphone to BBC Three Counties Radio (pretty brief one) BBC Radio Shrewsbury (v g, the DJ actually had read bits of the book!), BBC Radio Wales (a half-hour interview), and BBC Radio…

I was a guest on Thursday night on BBC London News, talking about whether children between the ages of 10-14 should be put in prison. The other guest was Enver Solomon, the Deputy Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. He was arguing that children should be given therapy instead of being punished.…

On Saturday and Sunday night, there were two major parties for the festival. Saturday’s party was hosted by GQ and Wasafiri,

I was told that it wasn’t safe to drink coca-cola because the monkeys would swoop down and snatch it out of my hand. I chucked my can in the bin, and followed my guide in the Elephanta caves. I had spent an hour on the boat, feeling the cool breeze against my forehead, and looking…

Blake Morrison raises his eyes to the heavens as he looks at the title to my event over breakfast. So you’re speaking about the role of the writer, are you Francis? That shouldn’t take long to sort out,’ he says with a wry smile. Blake is a renowned poet, whose anthology of British Poetry in…

The drilling next door made the whole of my hotel room vibrate. I immediately regretted not buying the long, deep earplugs I saw at the airport. I had slept for three hours and I knew now that that was my lot. And yet, I didn’t know where to go next. Fortunately, Sunita, an organiser from…

The Buddha looked down at me in the murky temple. Nirpal Dhaliwal, a fellow writer going to speak at the Kitab Festival with me, explained that this was a good religion, a gentle religion, one that didn’t specialise in making you feel bad about yourself. I looked at the elephant munching at the sticks of…