‘He fondly called me his hash baby’: Mandy Sayer on her larger-than-life father – a lawbreaking jazz musician who couldn’t read or write

Gerry Sayer was a warm, funny yet absent father, so consumed with music that he sacrificed family – but his ‘flair for improvisation’ inspired his writer daughter

Slow Horses author Mick Herron: ‘I love doing things that are against the rules’

As the hit thriller returns to our screens, its creator talks about false starts, surprise inspirations – and why he never looks inside Jackson Lamb’s head

‘You’re either getting punched or going skinny dipping’: Swedish indie star Jens Lekman on playing 132 weddings of his fans

He once sang, ‘if you ever need a stranger to sing at your wedding ... then I am your man’. Couples took him at his word. Now, he’s turned the experience into an album and novel

‘Europe is the core – America joined as an offshoot’: the historian challenging what ‘the west’ means

Was the ‘western alliance’ dreamt up to further American and British interests? Georgios Varouxakis argues that the idea is older, quintessentially European, and even anti-imperialist

‘You’re the only port of call for 400 hospital patients, which is absurd’: Matthew Hutchinson on the perils of life as an NHS doctor

He’s a rheumatologist, a standup comedian – and now the author of a memoir. He talks about racism in healthcare, why Covid was the only time urgent care was properly staffed – and his beef with cardiologists

‘I have no interest in the white gaze any more’: Randa Abdel-Fattah on Gaza, boycotts and her new novel

Discipline follows a journalist and an academic navigating censorship in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza – an issue the author is no stranger to herself

‘Literature can be a form of resistance’: Lea Ypi talks to Elif Shafak about writing in the age of demagogues

The Albanian author of Free and the Turkish novelist discuss the rise of populism, censorship – and how today’s conflicts all come from the unresolved trauma of the past

‘Pink Floyd were my landscape. I was a hippy’: Pierce Brosnan revisits his old London haunts

The former 007 and current star of The Thursday Murder Club goes for a stroll in London’s Camden Town and Primrose Hill. Can he get past the security guard at the Roundhouse, where he once walked a tipsy Tennessee Williams to his car?

Author Rie Qudan: Why I used ChatGPT to write my prize-winning novel

Sympathy Tower Tokyo attracted controversy for being partly written using AI. Does its author think the technology could write a better novel than a human?

‘I was completely dehumanised by my father’: how Kate Price uncovered the horrifying truths of her childhood

She was sexually abused by her father until she was about 12 – and he would also sell her to other men. Then she grew up and began researching child sex trafficking, slowly piecing together clues about her own life

Andy Griffiths: ‘I think it’s a pity that reading is being lost through neglect’

The multimillion copy-selling children’s author on his freewheeling childhood, the joy of being unproductive and life after the Treehouse series

‘I’m carrying survivor’s guilt’: Raymond Antrobus on growing up deaf

The poet reflects on his heritage, his new life as a father in Margate – and why his memoir is a call to arms

‘This truck is our home!’ How Bobby Bolton found love and purpose on a 42,000-mile road trip

No money, no flat, no fiancee: in 2022 Bolton lost almost everything that underpinned his life. Three years and 53 countries later, he has more than rebuilt it

‘How can I find meaning from the ruins of my life?’: the little magazine with a life-changing impact

After struggles with mental health and addiction, Max Wallis launched a poetry magazine – and it has transformed his life

‘Coupledom is very oppressing’: Swedish author Gun-Britt Sundström on the revival of her cult anti-marriage novel

As her million-selling 70s novel, Engagement, is translated into English for the first time, the Swedish author talks about life at 80, finding the ideal love, and why her generation were freer than today’s young people