NEWS
Sexcess for virgin novel
Young author pens global bonkbuster in the course of a single month by Katherine Landergan
Buzzfeed big rival for WSJ SITES LIKE Yahoo Finance and Buzzfeed Business are now directly competing with The Wall Street Journal, the paper’s editor-in-chief said in a lecture at City. Gerard Baker said he is confident the publication will remain a leading news source for the business sector. “I have absolute faith that in the end, the need for what we do isn’t going away,” Baker said during a lecture called “Business Journalism in the Digital Age” on 24 March. He joked that Buzzfeed Business and Yahoo Finance had “stolen some of our better reporters”. Baker said that despite its paywall, The Wall Street Journal has two million digital subscribers. Baker credited the publication’s unique online content and accuracy in breaking news. “We at The Journal will continue to make a more significant push than we are now.” Lucinda Borrell
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as she searches for men across London – from house parties to posh clubs. “So many people think it can’t be hard for a young girl to lose her virginity, but my character doesn’t want to settle for some awful person,” she said. Sanghani wrote the entire book in less than a month when she was recovering from a coach accident. While on a two-week holiday in February 2013, Sanghani was on an overnight coach that crashed and killed five people. She later learned that the driver was on amphetamines – the wheel exploded and he crashed into a tree. She said: “I was concussed for half an hour. When I woke up I just saw smoke and lots of bodies around me.” While being treated for back injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, Sanghani wrote the book to cheer herself up. “Instead of lying in bed crying all day, I went to Café Nero and wrote. It helped me on a day-to-day basis to keep going. “It started off as a project for myself, but then I started thinking this could be something bigger. This could be something people would actually want to read.” One of the first few agents Sanghani sent it to agreed to take her as a client. “I completely freaked out, I just cried nonstop,” she said.
THIS IMAGE: RII SHROER, BELOW: GETTY
A FIRST-TIME book written in a month about a student losing her virginity is set to make a former Newspaper MA student a hit novelist. Radhika Sanghani (Newspaper, 2012) said publishers have told her the book has “come at the right time”, as it is no longer taboo for young women to speak openly about sex. “Feminism is having a resurgence – just the other day, Katy Perry said she was a feminist, even though a few years ago she said she wasn’t. “TV programmes like Girls are showing a more realistic side of being a young woman in her 20s. People are now talking about these issues, even though this a story I’ve wanted to write for years.” Her friends “mainly just laughed” when she told them some of their personal stories were in the book. Sanghani said she hopes the book will help young girls realise there is no rush to lose their virginity. Sanghani, 23, participated in The Daily Telegraph’s graduate scheme, and now works full-time for The Daily Telegraph’s Wonder Woman online section. Virgin will be published by Harlequin in the United Kingdom, and with Penguin in the United States. It will also be published in 10 other countries, and translated into 11 languages. The book follows 21-year-old Ellie
Radhika Sanghani’s novel drew on the sexploits of her uni friends
During the summer Sanghani edited it, and by November she had finalised the offers from publishers. She is also writing the sequel to Virgin, which will follow the main character, Ellie, as she struggles to resolve her identity as a feminist with her newfound sexual exploits. Sanghani said: “It seems impossible that a dream I had as a kid could come true at such a young age. I’m so lucky.” Virgin will be out in August. It is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
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Shorthand tutor an expert in hacking case CITY’S SHORTHAND tutor helped prepare evidence for the ongoing News of the World phone-hacking trial. Journalists working at the paper are accused of conspiring to hack phones to acquire stories. The case, which includes former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, began at the Old Bailey last October.
Brooks’ reporters’ notebooks were scrutinised by Ward
Richard Ward, who trained in Pitman shorthand, has taught at City for four years. Last November he was asked to transcribe shorthand notes to be used as evidence. Initially he was the only teacher contracted to transcribe, but the amount of work meant two other shorthand teachers were later employed.
He said: “Imagine an A4 ring binder notebook with about 100 pages in each book – there were 35 of those that we had to try and transcribe as much as possible.” The team worked in a solicitor’s office with a guard constantly present and no time for breaks. “You were constantly focused in doing your work. It didn’t bother me, but I’m assuming it could bother other people, because you don’t have five minutes to make a phone call or anything like that.” Ward said the three teachers transcribed 17 notebooks in two-and-ahalf months. Anna Matheson
28/03/2014 11:29