Sunday Times readers *hated* my aside about the whole subject of consciousness being "just so male".

I reviewed Michael Pollan's impishly intelligent book on consciousness. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Should we give embryos polygenic "scores" - marking their risk of perpetrating violent acts? Should we factor genetic risk into sentencing? I reviewed Harden's Original Sin for The Times. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Remarkable that the agricultural inheritance tax changes which will affect less than 200 estates a year gets a long news report but insane changes to self-employed tax reporting which will burden millions with massive extra bureaucracy is completely ignored.

Sam Leith: "these tools are undermining not just the work and livelihoods of writers: they are undermining the very things that make the world trust and value what writers do. Don’t touch the fuckers with a disinfected plastic wand."

thank you for letting us publish it, Emma!

In all the advice for authors, there's not much about author photos but they’re crucial. My piece @thesocietyofauthors The Author mag has contributions by photographer Mark Grey and publicist Rebecca Gray. Thanks to @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social for spotting my original Itch post: buff.ly/1NlnWW9

Sphexishness. Now there's a word!

When I'm 64 is mostly a very slight Beatles song - a vaudeville pastiche that McCartney wrote when he was 14. But...

Novels that start with ostentatiously grabby first lines are like people who introduce themselves with chat-up lines. Massive turn-off. Not referring to Anybody McAnybody in particular.

Starting work soon on a new 3 year book project. People keep asking me if I’ll use AI to help me? I would rather wear a hornet’s nest for underpants than ever delegate thought to a plagiarism engine

The opaque financing of the richest family in the UK: Charles last published his taxes in 2021-22 – he paid 25 per cent of the £23 million duchy profit, deducting expenses claimed for 'official duties'. William has never declared his tax. www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-fam...

The Windsor family's receipts from the Crown Estate have grown 17 times from £7.9 million in 2011 to £137.9 million for 2026-27. www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-fam...

🚨Paper on AI & Copyright Courts have credited AI companies' claims that alignment prevents reproducing copyrighted data. What if finetuning on a simple writing task breaks it. Worse: tuning on just one author (e.g., Murakami) unlocks verbatim recall of 30+ other authors' books (up to 90%) (1/n)🧵

I’ve moved my writing into Google Docs so there is a version history with times, changes, notes to myself as comments are timestamped, and the whole thing can be shared if needed. Also have emails to and from agent and publisher. If someone was really interested, they could see my pencil notes.

Important point. I feel that software may have a more useful role in the authentication of the drafting process, not the 'detection' of a final MS.

We're working on it, Charlie scoop.uk.com

I do hope people appreciate the joke! For my new book (partly reflecting on a career in Classics, partly asking 'WHY study the deep past?', 'What do we get out of it?'), I chose an 'author photo' taken by my friend Di, 50+ years ago. Book details: tinyurl.com/fktznv5c

Refusal or unexplained inability to provide evidence in the form of notes, drafts, etc, to the agent/publisher/reliable third party. The answer lies not in the text but in the process, and in verification and certification. Alas.

this seems like an obvious question but: is there currently a way to prove--as in some (chimerical) "beyond a reasonable doubt" legal level--that any particular text was generated by AI?

I love this prize. And they shortlisted Jane Rogoyska's Hotel Exile.

Question for tech-minded authors: what can/should writers do, now, to be able to retrospectively prove that their work is not AI-generated? Is saving in-progress drafts enough?

Note the button 'make your text human with undetectable AI'. The tool of shysters.

Yay, non-fiction! And well done Harry Shukman.

Huge congratulations to our colleague Harry Shukman, who has won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for his book Year of the Rat. 🏆

What do you do, as a critic, when generative AI clearly/substantially/partly spawned a book but you can't know/prove it/risk defaming the author? You find the hallucinated quotes and stats. You say it's written *like* AI-generated prose, and show how.

The list of 'removed' books is staggering. Includes Jodie Picoult, Dan Brown, Zadie Smith, Terry Pratchett – and Michelle Obama's Becoming. www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/scho...

Freelancers who work for universities, rejoice! Government to make it mandatory for companies to pay supplier invoices within 60 days, or face fines/interest of 8% plus the base rate.

A recent books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Eleven bishops joined the late night sitting in the House of Lords to oppose abortion decriminalisation, with the Archbishop of Canterbury making a speech against reform. This is a stark reminder of the privileged position the Church of England has in our democracy.

...that feeling when you interview someone for the book and they're generous and insightful and everything falls into place.

Just had my first ever book club scam e-mail. Feel like a proper writer now.

Sad to read the news of Len Deighton's death. A little piece of digital publishing trivia: he was the first author to write a book with a word processor, an IBM MT/ST loaned to him in 1968.

Fantastic news in the UK today - the government has apparently ditched its plan to force creatives to 'opt out' if they don't want AI companies training on their life's work. www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog... 🧵 1/4

"airport book executive summary knowledge" is a useful concept

The Society of Authors has launched a 'Human Authored' scheme to 'help identify works written by humans in a market increasingly flooded by AI-generated books' 👇#BookSky

More on the class action lawsuit against Grammarly over their ill-advised "Expert Review" AI feature that appropriated the names and identities of writers and journalists without their knowledge or consent gizmodo.com/grammarly-al...

The Second Map on Radio 4 is excellent. But the continual claim that the Malaya/Singapore/Burma campaigns are forgotten/suppressed/unknown (because they're imperial, and embarrassing) is just not true.

I normally just put a big red arrow. For my next edit I shall adopt this approach.

We’re delighted to share the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award Shortlist:

“In 2024 the UK’s creative industries contributed £145.8 billion to the economy while the entire AI sector contributed £11.8 billion.” www.thetimes.com/article/8561...

looking forward to my 10,000th share of PLR on this one

We're handing out 1,000 free copies at London Book Fair over the next couple of days. If you’re there, pick up a copy! A huge thank you to the thousands of authors involved. Read more here: www.theguardian.com/technology/2... #DontStealThisBook /end

Are you a UK-based writer from an underrepresented group? The Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards are now open for applications: www.londonwriterscentre.org.uk/project/well...

I'm at an AI policy event where the chief executive of Ofcom just came on stage to Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise

Ferocious article. "The gift of Andy and Fergie... has been to bring the antiseptic of daylight to the culture of royal privilege." Except, it hasn't. Yet.

Election landslide for new, youth-backed centrist party led by former mayor, focused on good governance and inequality. Nepal leading the way.

UK ministers reportedly plan to delay changes to copyright law around AI after responses to a consultation failed to favour any of their options www.ft.com/content/e759...