Susanna Clarke’s second book, an anthology of shorter stories entitled ‘The Ladies of Grace Adieu’, is similarly excellent. It has the same sort of Austenesque feel to it, the stories are perfectly written and constructed, and the accompanying illustrations by Charles Vess are (as per usual) fantastic and atmospheric.

Dr Mieville (who has recently been appointed to a lectureship in creative writing here at Warwick) is a very interesting and clever (really, really clever) speaker. Anyone who can casually throw the phrase “vibrating aboutness cluster” into a serious (but entertaining) literary talk deserves respect. And his books are packed full of amazing ideas: winged intelligent humanoids with complex and alien legal systems, insectoid artists, the slake moths, the Possible Sword - any one of these is more imagination than most SF authors get into an entire book. A copy of ‘Iron Council’ has been sat waiting patiently on my ‘to be read’ stack for a while now, and I think it’s really about time I did something about it.