Bethan Marshall, a senior lecturer in English education at King's College London told the magazine the literary merit of picture books was often underestimated, comparing The Very Hungry Caterpillar favourably with another literary hit, Yann Martel's Life of Pi.
The story I wish to share with you is a blatantly personal one beginning with a kind of literary relationship between two very different women, both of whom greatly influenced my life.
One of the reasons for this literary success is that Mantel seems to have written a very good modern novel, then changed all her fictional names to English historical figures of the fifteen-twenties and thirties.
The city's artistic and literary history, including the Beats and the Dead, feels very much alive in the big chain-resistant bookstore and cafe culture.