Robert Robinson introduces a weekly look at hardbacks and paperbacks, fact and fiction, best-sellers and remainders.

This week's readers and writers:

Alberto Moravia, author of The Woman of Rome and Two Women, has a new book out, Lady Godiva and Other Stories. At his home in Italy he talks about this and his other work.

Born in Rome in 1907, Moravia was the son of an architect. He wrote his first novel in 1925 and then became foreign correspondent in London and Paris for La Stampa and Gazetta del Popolo. Under Fascism, he had to use a pseudonym and during the German occupation of Italy he hid in the mountains until liberated by the Americans in 1944. He now lives in Rome and Capri.

Yvonne Mitchell calls Colette 'perhaps the most truly liberated woman of the century' in her new illustrated biography Colette - A Taste for Life. She is in the studio to discuss her book.

Book borrowers from a public library in London say what they have been reading this summer.