Amazon and the National Literacy Trust to support the Prize in memory of Oscar Ashton

Claudia Winkleman will be joining the panel of judges for Oscar’s Book Prize, the children’s book award set up in memory of Oscar Ashton, the son of Evening Standard columnist James Ashton.

Oscar passed away in 2012 at the age of three from an undetected heart condition, and the £5,000 award, for the best book published in 2016 for children aged five or under, pays tribute to Oscar’s love of stories.  This year, Amazon and The National Literacy Trust are adding their support to the prize.

Claudia Winkleman said: “I can’t wait to read all the entries. I can still remember sitting on my parents’ lap while they read to me, loving their accents and squealing ‘more’ when they finished. My mum kept every book and I read them to my children.”

Winkleman will be joined by two other new judges this year: Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of the 2015 memoir The Last Act of Love, and Dan Mucha, Director of Books at Amazon.  As in previous years, Oscar’s parents, James Ashton and Viveka Alvestrand will also be on the panel.

Rentzenbrink said: “My son Matt is seven, about the same age that Oscar would be now. When I explained to him why I was judging this prize, he thought it was very sad that Oscar had died and that it was brilliant that his parents had wanted to do this for him…”

The prize is being supported as part of the Amazon in the Community programme, which aims to help children and young people thrive in the digital world, including equipping them with literacy skills.

Dan Mucha, Books Director, Amazon.co.uk said: “Amazon started life as a bookseller, and we are passionate about helping more children discover the joy of reading. It’s a privilege to support Oscar’s Book Prize, a competition which puts the love of stories above all else and encourages parents to read to their children from a young age.”

Jonathan Douglas, Director of the National Literacy Trust said: “We are delighted to be supporting Oscar’s Book Prize. It’s never too soon for parents to start reading with their young children, which will allow them to develop the vital language skills that will set them up for future success…’

Oscar’s Book Prize was set up in partnership with the Evening Standard three years ago. The prize has previously been won by Benji Davies for Storm Whale in 2014, by Steve Antony for The Queen’s Hat in 2015 and last year by Gemma Merino for The Cow Who Climbed a Tree.

“Oscar’s Book Prize is now a significant event in the publishing calendar and we are delighted to continue our partnership,” said Evening Standard editor Sarah Sands. “It is for the pleasure of all children and in particular remembering a little boy who loved to read – Oscar.”

Publishers are invited to submit entries for the 2017 prize by the 3rd of March.  The winner will be announced at a London-based event in May.  For more information please visit oscarsbookprize.co.uk.

These look to be worth a shake, and there’s fruit involved for those on healthy diets – ho hum. We’ve left you time to find the ingredients so there’s no excuse.

BULLDOG Gin’s Clover Club

2 parts BULLDOG Gin

0.75 parts Lemon Juice

0.25 parts Grenadine Syrup

1 egg white

Method:

Shake all ingredients without ice in a shaker.

Add ice cubes and shake again.

Double strain into a Michelangelo Coupette

Garnish with a raspberry

RRP £22.00

Stockist: Ocado.

HOXTON GINS ENGLISH DAIQUIRI

50 ml Hoxton Gin

20ml Crème de cocao white chocolate liqueur

20ml lemon juice

Dash of sugar syrup

Method:

Shake together with ice and serve through a strainer

Garnish with a twist of lemon peel

RRP £29.99

Stockist: Amazon

CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA’s RED TEMPEST

1.5oz Crystal Head Vodka

0.5 oz Amaretto

1.0 oz Fresh Orange Juice

2.0 oz soda

0.5 oz Monin Wildberry Puree

0.25 oz Monin Exotic Citrus Syrup

Fresh rosemary springs.

Method:

Stir in shaker with ice until all ingredients have dissolved.

Top with soda

Garnish Blackberries and a spring of rosemary.

RRP £49.99

Stockist: Selfridges

“She can make these movies until the cows come home, before slaughtering them for a barbecue without a hint of irony but plenty of bloody ketchup”

Prevenge – Directed by and starring Alice Lowe

Cert: 15 – 1 hr 28 – Comedy, Drama, Horror Fantasy

Alice Lowe is in charge of this movie – not only the writer and director, but playing the main character, Ruth, too. And she’s in every scene. But this film is more than an ego project. It’s witty, thought-provoking and disturbing, albeit falling a little short.

Ruth has been recently widowed and is seven months pregnant and alone in the world. Bitterness and grief fill her every moment. But there is also the voice of her unborn daughter, urging her to kill. Ruth’s homicidal journey, dispatching in horrific detail, a collection of misfits leads inevitably to the birth of the baby. Can there be a redemption? Is Ruth genuinely possessed or merely suffering a form of antenatal psychosis?

[Alice Lowe as Ruth]

Alice Lowe has risen through the ranks of radio and television comedy, specialising in sketches and dark humour. Crossing into films, in 2012 she co-wrote and starred in the cult hit Sightseers, before co-starring in Black Mountain Poets in 2015.

This is where I begin to have problems with Prevenge. I can look at stills from all these movies and see Alice playing the same deadpan, out-of-sync character. Prevenge does nothing new. It is undoubtedly a well made film. The cast are strong. The script succeeds in escorting me all the way to the predictable finale. But there is no originality here. No heart or joy. Cardiff and the Welsh coast appear grim and dirty. As I do when I leave the screening.

[Alice Lowe as Ruth in fancy dress]

I feel Alice is ticking boxes. She can make these movies until the cows come home, before slaughtering them for a barbecue without a hint of irony but plenty of bloody ketchup. She is better than this and I hope she can make the leap.

Prevenge is sitting uncomfortably between genres, not sure of the style it’s aiming for. Instead, it settles into a collection of macabre sketches. However, the film will make some people laugh a lot and they will enjoy the horror, too. Just as Alice shows in so many of the scenes – people are weird…

Review by Paul Vates.

Prevenge is on general release from February 9th.

Sponsored by Galaxy and run by The Reading Agency, which is funded by the Arts Council, the annual Quick Reads campaign is a wonderful initiative designed to inspire more people to read more often. Each year since 2006 at least six books have been released so there are now well over 100 available in total, often written by well-known authors, spanning a variety of genres and designed to pique the interest of as many people as possible.

This year the six titles are A Very Distant Shore (a romantic novel by Jenny Colgan), The Other Side of You (a modern re-telling of the Beauty and the Beast by Amanda Craig), Feel the Fear & Do It Anyway ( a self help book adapted from the work of the late Susan Jeffers) Dead Simple ( a collection of 8 short stories from well-known crime writers), Looking for Captain Poldark ( a heartwarming tale of four people united by their shared love of Poldark by Rowan Coleman) and One False Move (a tense novel set on the Devil’s Estate in London by Dreda Say Mitchell).

My personal favourite is A Very Distant Shore, but there is something for everyone here. Aimed at adults who are less confident in their reading skills, all six are shorter, in a larger font and with a less complicated vocabulary than many books. But they are all still good reads with interesting and gripping plots. I’m sure they will appeal to a variety of readers for a variety of reasons. My 90 year old mother-in-law (an avid reader all her life) who can no longer manage books which are heavy to hold, or which require a long attention span, is going to love them – though I might just reserve the right to select for her those which contain material suitable for a 90 year old!

These latest Quick Reads are available from bookshops from 2^nd February 2017 priced at £1 each (and what a bargain that is) and will also be stocked by many libraries.

In Tell me a Lie PC Lucy Davies suspects Adrian Calder’s shooting dead of his wife and children is not quite the open and shut case others think.

But is it? Or not?

Hot on the heels of Spare me the Truth, in which we were introduced to the brilliantly conceived duo of Dan Forrester and our Lucy, we meet them again. I consider her ‘our Lucy’, which means that for me a writer has succeeded in sucking me into a character’s world. That character is PC Lucy Davies, who never feels more alive ‘than when on a blue light’.

But Carver, one of Frost Magazine’s favourite authors, has done the same for Dan Forrester, who is cursed with amnesia – a by product of a breakdown.

CJ Carver has created two complex characters in Dan and Lucy, characters who we first met twisting, turning, and weaving through a multi-layered plot in Spare me the Truth.

So has Carver done it again with Tell me a Lie (love the echo of the Spare me the Truth  title)?

Indeed, the girl ‘done good’. Never once does Carver drop the baton. We not only enmesh ourselves in the characters’ life problems, but in the Russian spider’s web of a conspiracy into which Dan is drawn, one which might threaten Dan’s wife.

First a sleeper agent in Moscow demands a meeting with Dan but when Dan’s cover is blown, he is on his own.

Lucy’s straightforward case proves not to be. Indeed, it is linked to Dan’s.

Does the situation indeed threaten Dan’s wife, Jenny, an accountant?

I have absolutely no intention of spilling the beans, but trust me, our Lucy and Dan combine their skills in a top gear screech through a world of high optimum cars, spies and chilling machinations, but, they’re operating almost in the dark. After all, how does anyone protect their family when they don’t know the predator?

This is an extraordinarily tense clever thriller.

Don’t expect to sleep, because this is unputdownable.

Valentine’s Day is on the horizon – forget the hearts and flowers, just go for the sleepless nights.

Great stuff, from an international thriller writer of inordinate skill.

Tell me a Lie     CJ Carver      Zaffre £7.99

It’s the standard question. Asked from day one in primary school. Who cares? I was intent on digging up the sand pit and impatient to know the intentions of the blond kid who had nicked my shovel, but the teacher seemed quite determined to know my destiny. It would continue as a question from then until the quicksands of high school. Other questions too. What do you enjoy? What do you want to be? What are you good at? As if those three were likely to coalesce together and reveal the nirvana of employment. As if.

Mostly, my mates shrugged in reply when they were asked. Some still shrugged when they turned thirty. The blond kid with the shovel was one of them. He was still searching, although, as a stop gap that had lasted half his life, he worked as a construction labourer. Should have known really.

Ah, but me, I was one of those annoyingly cock-sure kids. From age six, I wanted to join the Air Force. Possibly earlier, but I have written proof from age six, when we were asked to write our ‘life stories’ for English. It was, necessarily, a short volume, but on the last page it says, “I wont to be an Ayr Force Pilet.” I was six and there was no spell check. Give me a break.

Thing is, I went off the pilot idea quite quickly because I was more interested in fixing stuff than flying, so for aircrew, I substituted aircraft technician. With the certainty came impatience. I knew exactly what I wanted, but I still had to attend classes that weren’t relevant to me. I had to wait until I was old enough, wait until my exams came through, wait until the next intake date. Time seemed to drag, but eventually I joined up.

During my career, through a series of weird and wonderful coincidences, opportunities and blind luck, I ended up being commissioned as an Intelligence Officer. With not a dry martini nor an Aston Martin in sight, I decided after twenty years to depart for foreign shores. Australia and sunshine welcomed me.

Throughout my service, in fact since the six year old with his thin life story, I had always written. Silly rhymes, short stories, general ramblings. I knew, deep down, I’d write a book one day and five years out of the military, I started in earnest. A couple of misfires, a few writer blocks and an eventual breakthrough, saw me finishing it four years later.

Which is a good thing, because in the delay, Publish-on-Demand technologies had come to the fore and for the first time new authors had a real choice in how they brought their books to a global audience. I could either try to break into the traditional publishing houses, or, I could act independently. My inherent impatience made up my mind for me. I wasn’t prepared to wait years to be ‘discovered’, when I could launch my novel into the world almost immediately. Luckily for me, the reviews were good and the confidence they instilled, led me to start on another. This year will see my fourth released. It also sees a truth revealed, four and a half decades late.

What do I want to be when I grow up? A writer, Miss. A writer.

Ian Andrew is the author of the alternate history, A Time To Every Purpose and the Wright & Tran series of crime novels that includes Face Value, Flight Path and the new release, Fall Guys. He is also the author of the ‘Little Book of Silly Rhymes and Odd Verses’. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and his blog at ianandewauthor.com