On my radar: Jon McGregor’s cultural highlights

Born in Bermuda and raised in Norfolk, Jon McGregor wrote his first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, while working in a vegetarian restaurant. The novel was long-listed for the 2002 Booker prize, making McGregor, then 26, the youngest ever contender. He has written two more novels as well as short fiction. The University of Nottingham gave him an honorary doctorate in 2010, and later appointed him professor of creative writing in its school of English. His fourth novel, Reservoir 13, which last week won the Costa award for best novel of 2017, is out in paperback on 25 January; its “prequel” The Reservoir Tapes, is a series of specially commissioned stories for BBC Radio 4.