University of Chichester

To complete what has been a very fine week, I've just been appointed an Associate Lecturer at the University of Chichester, where I'll be leading a second-year module on post-War British culture in the next academic year.

I'm looking forward to this. As I've said here before, I really like Chichester, both as a city and a university, and I'm very grateful to Dr Hugo Frey, the Head of the History Department, for giving me this opportunity. It's a new and unexpected direction for me.

I'm also grateful to Dr Adam Locks of the Media Studies Department, who first invited me to Chichester to participate in the splendid Avengers conference last year.

I rather wish I'd had the likes of Hugo and Adam around when I was at college, as opposed to the lecturers I did have, who insisted I should be reading Henry James and Edith Wharton rather than Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells. So I'm really pleased to be joining them, in a junior capacity. It should be fun.

The New Statesman (again)

I bought my copy of this week's New Statesman today, complete with seven-page cover-story extract from my e-book Things Can Only Get Bitter.

I'm tremendously pleased with this. I'm on the cover of a magazine that published - amongst many others - three of my greatest literary heroes: George Orwell, H.G. Wells and J.B. Priestley. I'm very grateful to the editor Jason Cowley for his support, and to dozens of others, including the chief sub-editor Nana Yaa Mensah.

The book should be available at the end of next week, but until then, the New Statesman is clearly the place to be.