Charles Cumming

Charles Cumming, author of A Spy By Nature and The Spanish Game thrillers among others is currently promoting the paperback release of his acclaimed new book Typhoon.

Typhoon starts in Hong Kong of ‘97 - only a few short months of British rule remain before the territory returns to Chinese rule. In the environment of uncertainty and fear the spooks are hard at work, jostling for position and influence.

So when an elderly man emerges from the seas off the New Territories, claiming to know secrets he will share only with the Governor himself, a young MI6 agent Joe Lennox, sees an opportunity to make his reputation.

But when the old man, a high-profile Chinese professor, is spirited away in the middle of the night by Joe's superiors, in collusion with the CIA, it's clear that there's a great deal more than a young spy's career at stake. The professor, it seems, holds the key to a sinister and ambitious plan that could have awesome and catastrophic repercussions for China in the 21st century.

Born in Ayr, Scotland in 1971 he was educated at Eton and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with First Class Honours in English Literature in 1994. He’s a contributing editor of The Week magazine and occasionally writes book reviews for The Mail on Sunday. Charles lets The Book Show in on what delights can be found on his bedside table.

Len Deighton: Action Cook Book
This is one of Len Deighton's classic cookstrips, the series that ran for two years when he was the Observer food writer. Before he became famous as the thriller writer of his generation, Len Deighton had trained as a pastry chef. He was also a brilliant graphic artist. The Action Cookbook is the perfect mix of these two passions. The Action Cook Book' was once an instructional book for the bachelor male - a guide to sophisticated cooking for the would-be Harry Palmer. It now has a great following as a fabulous piece of nostalgia as well as retaining real credibility as a genuinely useful cook book. If you need to create the basic wine cellar (basic to Len Deighton -- decidedly aspirational to the rest of us), or to learn how to cook full-bodied meals with a seductive touch (how could you resist brain soufflé?) then this is the book for you.

Me Cheeta – Autobiography
The incredible, and moving true story of Cheeta the Chimp, star of countless Hollywood blockbusters, told in his own words. He was just a baby when snatched from the jungle of Liberia in 1932, by the great animal importer Henry Trefflich, who went on to supply NASA with its 'Monkeys for Space' programme. That same year, Cheeta appeared in Tarzan the Ape Man, and in 1934 Tarzan and His Mate, in which he famously stole the clothes from a naked Maureen O'Sullivan, dripping wet from an underwater swimming scene with Johnny Weissmuller. Cheeta tells it all from a life lived with the stars to his journey beyond the screen: his struggle with drink and addiction to cigars; his breakthrough with a radical new form of abstract painting, 'Apeism'; his touching relationship with his retired nightclub-performing grandson Jeeta, now a considerable artist in his own right; his fondness for hamburgers and his battle in later life with diabetes; and, through thick and thin, carer Dan Westfall, his loving companion who has helped this magnificent monkey come to terms with his peculiar past.

Richard Ford: The Lay of the Land
It is fall, 2000 - and in every household and bar across the USA the likely outcome of the hijacked Presidential election is being hotly debated. Frank Bascombe, fifty-five, settled in his realty business in Sea-Clift, New Jersey, has arrived at a state of optimistic pragmatism that he calls the Permanent Period of life. Epic mistakes have already been made; dreams downsized, and Frank reflects that now at least there are fewer opportunities left in life to get things wrong. But the tranquillity he had anticipated is not to be. Who could have guessed that his second wife Sally would walk out on their apparently happy marriage? Or that, after all these years, he would be spending Thanksgiving dinner with first wife Ann and their two children? That Ann might still, after all, feel for him what he has never quite stopped feeling for her? Life in the Permanent Period proves as ambivalent, precarious and full of possibility as life had ever been

We met Charles Cumming at the Hay Festival last summer, see our webcam exclusive interview with Charles on tackling China for his latest novel >>

Continuing from the Hay-on-Sky from 2008, see what Charles Cumming planned to follow Tycoon with, on chess and conspiracies >>

If you want to find out more about Charles and read extracts of Charles’ most recent books, visit http://www.charlescumming.co.uk/