Fifty-odd years ago Herbert Lomas, a lovely man and very good poet, published a book suggesting that we could solve a lot of problems by just getting rid of money. Title: Who Needs Money? Lomas doesn’t, now – he died in 2011 – but in the meantime CBe does. Earlier this month Waterstones returned books that they’d ordered in and failed to sell and got a refund of £970. That’s a big pothole in the road that needs to be filled in. There is now a Donate link on the website which will set you back £20. You can press it once, twice, many times, or not at all. Anyone who does press it will be sent, as a thank-you, a copy of an odd little CBe booklet titled Vedute a colori: 32 pages, printed in colour, 150 copies only and just some of those reserved for the pushers of the Donate button. The booklet reproduces postcards from three series and adds minimal text.
There’s a fine review of Patrick McGuinness’s Ghost Stations in the current Literary Review by Jonathan Keates: ‘I love Ghost Stations. I wish I’d written it myself. Its tones are civilised, funny and humane …’
The CBe edition of Agota Kristof’s Trilogy is now officially out of print. It will be republished later this year by Penguin later this year, who will also take over Kristof’s The Illiterate. But the last copies of the CBe edition of Trilogy are right here, in a box by this desk, and available from the website.
The two 2026 CBe titles available from the website are Farah Ali, Telegraphy (January) and Erin Vincent, Fourteen Ways of Looking (March).
