Bibliofile

After Winston Churchill nicked Princess Diana to the top place in a TV game show called Who-is-the-greatest-Briton-of-them-all, it will now be the turn of English writers. The bbc is planning to launch a highbrow hit lit parade next March where viewers will be asked to vote for the greatest work of literature in the English language. The Big Read, with 10 programmes by well-known personalities rooting for their favourites, will culminate sometime in August-September with a live showdown, like the final of Great Britons. The idea is to get couch potatoes to read, and the BBC even plans to encourage its viewers to join book clubs. That is not all: come Valentine’s Day, there will be readings of more than 25 poems as fillers in bbc programmes.

This may not be the most dreaded literary prize, but it comes close: the Diagram prize in the UK entered the award circuit in 1978 and the award goes to a book with the oddest title. This year’s winner is Living with Crazy Buttocks, a commentary on contemporary culture by journalist and cartoonist Kaz Cooke. On the shortlist: Without Regret: A Handbook for Owners of Canine Amputees; Women and Integrated Part Management; Passing Gas; First You Take a Leek; After the Orgy: Towards a Politics of Exhaustion; Melons for the Passionate Grower; and Six-Legged Sex: The Erotic Lives of Bugs.