It is what we are having today. Three of the Long Barn Books Editorial Board and I are here in the Gloucestershire rural wilderness having a day planning and thinking ahead. People are to come up with bright ideas so that other people can demolish them, suggestions as to entirely new things never been done before in the history of the book will be bandied to and fro and generally we hope to come out of it, after an excellent pub lunch, with grand plans. All of which means that I won`t write the blog proper until later this evening, when my hot, exhausted brain has recovered from being stormed.

I am going to write again about the man I am so often writing about.. Joseph Roth. I was delighted to see that in The Spectator Books of the Year, Anita Brookner, another of my favourite writers, chose a new edition of some of Roth`s journalism from the 30s. The same book is on my own list, to be written about here. He is such an important figure, one of the greatest of European writers from the 20th century, that I will never apologise for returning to him because I am on a mission to persuade everyone to buy him and read him and enrich their lives.

I will be putting my money where my mouth is again and buying some of his books to give away, so intent am I on making converts.

More after the brains have stormed.