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Peach melba, as all the world surely knows, was invented in the early 1890s by Auguste Escoffier, the French chef of the Savoy hotel, for the superstar Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. At a dinner thrown to celebrate her triumph in Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House, Escoffier presented Nellie with fresh peaches – her absolute favourite – served over ice cream; later, he would amend the recipe by adding raspberry puree. Even today, the Savoy still serves it in one of its restaurants (or at least, a variation…

Imogen Carter’s picture books of the yearAfter the years of huddling at home, it was time to party. There were landmark birthdays: Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler toasted 30 years of working together with a hit exhibition at the Lowry in Salford (until 1 Jan) and Benji Davies marked 10 years of bestseller The Storm Whale with a shindig and a fantastic sequel, The Great Storm Whale (Simon and Schuster). Elsewhere, pioneers were celebrated: a British Library show honouring Malorie Blackman’s career threw open its doors,…

Michael Rosen is extraordinary. At 77, our former children’s laureate has written, or had a hand in, more than 200 books, but it is the quality of the work that counts: enduringly funny, light yet deep. When we meet, he brings along a mini-library of his recently published titles, including his latest memoir, Getting Better, and a reassuring picture book, The Big Dreaming, and The Incredible Adventures of Gaston le Dog, for older children, and a volume of which he is especially proud, the French translation of his poems…

FictionZadie Smith’s first foray into historical fiction, medieval magical realism from Salman Rushdie and Paul Murray’s Booker-shortlisted tragicomedy – Justine Jordan looks back on the year in fiction.Read all fictionChildren’s booksFrom poignant stories of love and grief to picture books about rockets and ogres, Imogen Russell Williams picks the best books for children, including titles by Carnegie-winning Katya Balen and children’s laureate Joseph Coelho.Read all children’s booksYoung adult booksImogen Russell…

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The book I’ve recommended most this year – and had the most enthusiastic feedback about, a whopping 656 pages later – is without doubt Paul Murray’s Booker-shortlisted tragicomedy, The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton). This story of an Irish family’s tribulations told from four points of view combines freewheeling hilarity with savage irony, surprise reveals and generations-deep sadness; it offers the immersive pleasures that perhaps only a fat family saga can bring. It lost out on the night to Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, a…

Published posthumously, this autobiography by TN Seshan traces the life of one of India’s gutsiest bureaucrats who, through his reading of laws, brought Indian politicians to their knees. By chronicling his career from the 1950s to the 1990s, this book flings open windows into corridors of power that don’t make for pretty viewing as our politicians appear instinctively unethical. Seshan’s efforts, well-meaning but invariably controversial, gleam through much political muck. Chief Election Commissioner TN Seshan…

In Roman Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short stories, mysterious foreigners mingle, sometimes simply exist, in Rome. Selfies on the Spanish Steps in Rome. (Chabe01 / Wikimedia Commons) They are professors, spouses, temporary workers, tourists, refugees, children of immigrants... people from different parts of the world, all negotiating their foreignness, sometimes around pretty ordinary circumstances like a simple meal, other times facing racist attacks or hostility. Stay tuned with breaking news…

Has the focus on Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Premchand, Qurratulain Hyder, and Gulzar among Urdu-English translators overshadowed other writers from being known more widely? Or do you hold publishers responsible? Author Rakshanda Jalil (Courtesy the subject) Certain names are most anthologised and taken to be most representative of a literature. In this, more than the publishers, I would say lazy volume editors are at fault. Like tired ghosts, some writers – and only some of their “best known” stories –…

In Making It So, the actor Patrick Stewart chronicles his working-class childhood in a two-up, two-down in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, where his “weekend alcoholic” father, still traumatised after fighting in the second world war, would return from the pub and terrorise his wife as his children watched. Stewart found refuge in books at the local library – at home he would don gloves and a hat and read in the family’s outdoor toilet – and, with the encouragement of a schoolteacher, developed a love of Shakespeare. This, in…