Arrived back in London this morning having missed the Booksellers Association Conference which was held in Harrogate this year. Apparently there was a dearth of booksellers which rather misses the point. It would be awful if it were to become just another get-together for publishers.

However, the good news from Harrogate is that Pan Macmillan's brilliant rights director, Chantal Noel, was voted rights professional of the year. I'm amazed she hasn't won it before but better late than never. I tried googling Chantal for a photo, only to discover there is another Chantal Noel who is not in the least like ours.

And another friend was voted young publisher of the year - Clare Christian, managing director of The Friday Project.

Trivial fact of the day. I was discussing the differences in style between American and British dictionaries - in partcicular between Webster's Third International and the Oxford English Dictionary. The American approach is to be far more descriptive (for instance, check out Webster's definition of 'hotel'). The British approach is to describe a word accurately with as few words as possible. I believe the greatest (and least helpful) example of this was in the sixth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary where the brilliant but pedantic editor, John Sykes, defined 'aspirin' in two words, analgesic febrifuge.