Once pioneers in the world of broadcast news ITN has now lost its way. Gerald Isaaman examines a new book charting its demise

SO the litany continues. “It is a bastard art,” complains Andrew Marr in his introduction to Richard Lindley’s compelling history of Independent Television News (ITN), the once independent pioneering news station.
His reference is to the nature of modern journalism and echoes his views expounded in his own history of journalism, published last year, echoes that have reverberated in a succession of reporters’ books, notably those of ITN’s Jon Snow, not to mention the BBC’s Michael Buerk, Martin Bell and especially the commanding contribution by the Hampstead journalist John Lloyd.

Former bookseller Ian Norrie unveils the adventures of Olivia Manning, a writer who never received the recognition her talent deserved

Olivia Manning was an unlucky woman. She knew it; she resented it. She was at least as gifted a novelist as some of her contemporaries but unlike them she did not win the Booker, her books were not bestsellers and the TV serial made of her most famous work was screened after her death.
She was envious of what ‘Iris’ and ‘Muriel’ and ‘Beryl’ had achieved. The only woman novelist of her time whom she worshipped was Ivy-Compton-Burnett, a writer’s writer if ever there was, whose books sold fewer than Olivia’s, as did those of William Gerhardie. He was the male novelist she most admired and he may have been her lover.