ATLANTIC
A vast ocean of a million stories
Simon Winchester
Harper Press - $39.99

Simon Winchester is one of the big name authors attending The Press Christchurch Writers Festival 9-12 September. His latest book above is to be released in September to mark his visit.
Travelling by small sailing craft, container ship and general cargo vessel Winchester journeyed around and across the vast expanse of ocean to write about and from the places that encapsulate the Atlantic's fascinating stories.

In The Listener of  August 28, on sale today, Jane Tollerton has a great three page feature on the author whom she says has had two writing lives. The first was "as the classic eye-of-the-storm reporter". He was in Belfast for Bloody Sunday, in Washington for Watergate and in  Hong Kong when it was handed back to China, among many other journalistic high adventures. His second life is as a best-selling non-fiction writer.

I greatly enjoyed Tollerton's article which concludes with Winchester recalling a Kiwi adventure (he has been here many times) he shared once with Prime Minister David Lange.

In addition to this story there are seven other pages given over to books in The Listener this week including a raft of reviews and  a Christchurch book group's efforts to pick the winner of the New Zealand Post Book Awards fiction prize.