Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex Dorries grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool, training as a nurse before becoming MP for Mid-Bedfordshire in 2005. The character Nellie Deane in The Four Streets is "very much based on her own grandmother", said De Courcy.

Braverman wrote Sunak a horrible letter, and her allies let it be known they were planning a “grid of shit” in a fairly implausible attempt to force him out. This, the paper’s editorial admitted, wasn’t a great idea. “Rebel Tories are once again talking of going to war against Downing Street,” it said. “Have they learned nothing from the pantomime of the past two years?”

'Dorries is the queen of the saga and she is back with a heart-wrenching, captivating new novel'

The novel, out on 10 April, sees the MP take on the challenge of regional accents with gusto – "Jaysus, Kitty, someone has just walked over me grave, so they have" – ladling on the poverty and the overcrowding ("Between her nine children there were five pairs of shoes. Whoever's turn it was for the shoes would play outside, or go to school that day") and not worrying about offending with stereotypes: "Jerry was an Irishman. He might have been about to have sex for the first time in almost two years, he might have been angry and have lost all reason, but he wasn't going to spill the Guinness." When we study data around reader engagement with this genre, we find that readers of this type of book are highly engaged in a manner we don't necessarily see across other categories. The success of Call the Midwife means we are also seeing strong sales for nostalgic memoir in the same vein and we don't expect to see a decline in this genre anytime soon," said Kobo's director of merchandising Nathan Maharaj. HarperNonFiction originally set the publication date for 28th September 2023. Publisher Adam Humphrey negotiated the deal for world all-language rights with Piers Blofeld at Sheil Land Associates earlier this year.

Now, with the Conservatives so far behind in the polls, the newspaper is attempting a spot of its hero’s beloved cakeism: fuelling the internecine psychodrama, even as it urges the protagonists to call it off. The cognitive dissonance is giving many in the ranks, and even some columnists, a headache. Verity is widely seen as a natural editor, decisive and instinctual. But that is no longer enough to blunt questions about the impact of his loyalties on a newspaper whose readers, a recent poll suggested, are more likely to vote Liberal Democrat or Labour than Conservative. The trouble is, everyone is scared to say so. Dorries, who previously served as culture secretary, said: "What began as an investigation into how Boris Johnson was removed from office ultimately revealed a corruption of democracy deep at the heart of the Conservative Party and in Downing Street. Secrecy, fear and the cloak of anonymity have protected those who wield power in the shadows, until now. It makes ’The House of Cards’ appear tame, but this is no made up tale, it’s for real and for the first time, their political darks arts are about to be revealed.” Anticipating a Rishi Sunak defeat, it could cast its lot in with the hard right, and put its faith in the likes of Suella Braverman; or it could do its best to shore up the current government’s prospects, for fear of something even less popular. Instead, under editor Ted Verity, the Mail finds itself caught hopelessly in the middle – and many of its staff say privately that they find its strategy baffling. Always the self-declared voice of middle England, the Mail can no longer seriously claim to be even the voice of the people who work for it. Readers, too, will have to rely on their own memories to put the puzzle together, rather than find an explanation in a newspaper where unhelpful past iterations of the editorial line are ignored with the same breeziness that Marvel movies discard plotlines deemed no longer canon. This is a dangerous strategy. At the Mail, it’s always year zero. But its audience has always had a firm grip on the idea that in the past, everything made a little more sense.The MP, who drew criticism in 2012 for going on the reality show I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, has said that she wrote the novel for fun between Commons votes. She has always, she told the Guardian via her publisher, loved the saga genre, starting out with Susan Howatch's Penmarric – set in Cornwall and following the stories of feuding families from the Victorian era to the second world war – and Sins of the Fathers. The saga is not a genre which calls for literary conceits and complications, but depends on a down-to-earth and from-the-heart quality. Nadine – like Maeve Binchy and Helen Forrester – has this in spades." Take a Look at Our Summary of November Highlights, Whether You're Looking for the Latest Releases or Gift Inspiration Maybe I was yearning for the stability and continuity to be found in a family, community saga," she said. "Since that time, each and every time I find myself in a bookshop, I realise that subconsciously, I am searching for another Penmarric and I am always frustrated not to find one. I could only ever dream and aspire to become even nearly as good a writer as Susan Howatch. However, I did realise that if I am searching, others may be too."