In History out, celebrities in as top publisher wields axe in The Observer David Smith and Siobhan Sheerin write about Orion's radical shift for its Weidenfeld and Nicolson imprint.

Is there trouble brewing in the UK ? The Times reports that Amazon furious after publishers undercut its book prices online.

In The Hindu Anupama R. profiles Alain Mabanckou, in Roots that sustain.

Yeah, getting Lily Allen to judge the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction was a brilliant idea ... and looks even more brilliant now that, just before the shortlist is announced, she's decided she doesn't want to play along after all.

The Sunday Times gets the author of the previously most notorious Sir Vidia account, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Paul Theroux, to write about Patrick French's V.S.Naipaul-biography, The World Is What It Is -- and he thinks: "it will probably destroy Naipaul's

Will he live to eat his words ? In his review of Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence in the Financial Times John Sutherland goes way out on a limb.