As I disappear for a week off, I leave three holiday reading recommendations for anyone doing likewise.
And I make no apologies for flagging up the three books which were finalists for the Orange Award for New Writers which I helped judge.
It was a hard-fought battle with co-judges Diana Evans, the author, and Mishal Husain, of the BBC, but we all felt we presented a strong list.
Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun is a tough and gritty tale of life on the streets written with a poet’s eye for the telling praise and the winner, An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay, is a beautiful story of a brilliant woman painter where the paintings seem to dance in vivid colours before your eyes.
And if I leave The Personal History of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber to last it is only to give space to a little of Ann Weisgarber’s own history.
She is a white sociology teacher who lives in Texas.
She has written an utterly convincing evocation of a black family who settle in the Badlands of South Dakota in the early years of the 20th century, inspired by a photograph of a real-life black settler that alerted her to this little-known strand of American life in the Mid-West.
The politics of race in the USA is such that even after securing a British publisher, no American house took up the book – until we shortlisted it. Forgive me if I feel very proud.

Don’t hold back! That’s my advice for anyone lucky enough to have nabbed a place in Tunnel 228, the Old Vic’s inventive collaboration with the Punchdrunk company in disused railway arches under Waterloo.

Having previewed the venture with the Old Vic’s artistic director Kevin Spacey last week, I returned today for the full-on experience.

It is less of a full-blown show than fans of Punchdrunk’s Faust or Masque of the Red Death might want. And the art is, of necessity, of the variety that will dazzle in the dark.

Yet even if some of the complicated Heath Robinson-esque machinery seemed to be testing the cast still only three days in, this art-exhibition-with-added-theatricals has mesmerising moments of beauty and disturbing corners that might make you jump.

But you have to explore. Go through that door. Bend your knees to explore the view at ground-level. And don’t ignore the big, black curtain. You really wouldn’t want to miss what’s behind it. Would you?

ends