Shares in educational publisher Pearson slump as Apollo pulls out The company, which was on a steady recovery path, was biggest faller on FTSE 100 on Wednesday
Butler to the World by Oliver Bullough review – bent Britain at your service This unmissable history traces Britain’s cynical transition over 70 years from imperial power to kleptocrats’ best friend
Shares in education publisher Pearson jump 20% on hopes of private equity bid Market value increases by nearly £1bn as Apollo considers improved cash offer after £6.4bn deal rejected
Bid by Kazakh mining company to sue journalist is dismissed by judge Libel claim against Financial Times writer Tom Burgis had been brought to court in London by ENRC
Waterstones acquires Blackwell’s, the UK’s biggest independent bookseller Sale of 143-year-old family-owned business marks a further concentration of the industry
Books overboard! Supply chain headaches leave publishing all at sea Containers full of books at the bottom of the ocean are just one problem for an industry facing a host of shortages
James Wharram obituary Catamaran boatbuilder, Atlantic sailor and adventurer with an unconventional family life
Family owners put Blackwell’s bookshops up for sale Waterstones seen as potential buyer after 143-year-old chain ditches plan to become employee-owned
Recipe for disaster: first runs of two new cookbooks lost at sea A container collapse in the mid-Atlantic earlier this month sank copies of Mason Hereford’s Turkey and the Wolf and Melissa Clark’s Dinner in One
Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to task Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley and the best of Capitol Hill and wants to help. His aims are ambitious, his book necessary
UK book sales in 2021 highest in a decade Booming appetites for crime, sci-fi and romance drive fiction sales 20% higher than in 2019, with Richard Osman the year’s bestselling author
US author to give away £10,000 prize cash over role of sponsor in opioid crisis Investigative reporter Patrick Radden Keefe will give money from business book of the year shortlisting to charity over involvement of McKinsey firm
John Lewis sued by self-published children’s author over Christmas ad Fay Evans alleges a ‘striking similarity’ between the 2019 Excitable Edgar TV campaign and her 2017 book Fred the Fire-Sneezing Dragon
John Hitchin obituary Other lives: Publisher and bookseller who became Penguin retail director and president of the Booksellers Association
Harry Potter publisher reports record profits despite supply chain crisis Titles such as Tom Kerridge’s latest cookbook prove popular for Bloomsbury during Covid pandemic