While you’re waiting for the final book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, The Mirror and the Light, due out next year, you can enjoy The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, October), her collection of 10 short stories about the late British prime minister. The title is a clue to Mantel’s (pictured) fascination with timeless political machinations. She has said a key character in the fictional stories came to her in a hallucination while she was on morphine in hospital years ago. Her British publisher, Nicholas Pearson of Fourth Estate, says the book ‘‘shows us the country we have become’’. In one of those strange but common publishing coincidences, in December HarperCollins will also publish Marsha Mehran’s third novel, The Margaret Thatcher School of Beauty, a story about Iranian refugees in Buenos Aires during the Falklands War. Mehran, author of the bestseller Pomegranate Soup, was born in Iran and had lived in Argentina and Australia.  She died this year aged 36.

READING AUSTRALIAN CLASSICS

There’s been much discussion about the neglect of Australian literature in education and general reading. But the zeitgeist seems to be changing, helped by publishers making classics available. The Copyright Agency Ltd is urging school teachers to choose books for next year from its Reading Australia website, which has teaching resources related to 200 adult and children’s books, both classic and contemporary. The University of Sydney has taken up an idea suggested by novelist Michelle de Kretser for public talks by authors on a favourite Australian book (whatson.sydney.edu.au). ‘‘The best readers I know are writers, yet there are few opportunities for writers to engage with literature in the public sphere,’’ de Kretser says. ‘‘At festivals and in interviews, writers are usually invited to talk about their own work and creative practices. But what might they have to say about the books that have stirred their imaginations?’’ The first series of Reading Australian Literature features de Kretser on Jessica Anderson's (pictured) Tirra Lirra by the River (August 11, 6pm); Drusilla Modjeska on Visitants by Randolph Stow (September 1), and Fiona McFarlane on The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White (September 22).

Also, the NSW Writers’ Centre will present an event at the State Library of NSW called Honouring Thea Astley on Saturday, August 23 at 2pm, with Mark MacLeod, Debra Adelaide, Susan Sheridan and Felicity  Castagna. Julie Tsalis, the writers’ centre program manager, plans an annual event to celebrate writers who have made an important contribution to our literary culture. Astley, who died 10 years ago, was the only writer to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times. "My writing hairs have worn off with age, like the hairs on your legs,’’ she told me in an interview the previous year, but she left 16 books that still glint with intelligence, wit and heart.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS

Another event at Sydney University (Monday, August 4, 6pm) tackles The Future of Cultural Journalism - a subject that stirs anxiety, outrage, rivalry and occasional compliments. Peter Rose, the editor of Australian Book Review, Catriona Menzies-Pike, arts editor of The Conversation website, and Michael Visontay, editor of the university alumni magazine SAM, will look at changes in the media, the rise of reader-reviewers, and future funding for arts coverage and criticism. Expect a spirited conversation as Rose recently wrote a defence of Australian book reviewing in reply to a piece on The Conversation by John Dale, author, critic and academic, which criticised the poor quality of Australian book reviewing.