Cover stories: Sid Smith, Camilo José Cela, A Thousand Country Roads, James Thin

And the award for plain speaking at a literary dinner goes to... the former Independent sub-editor Sid Smith, in a video interview about his Whitbread First Novel-winning début, Something Like a House. With the overall Whitbread victor Philip Pullman championing heresy and subversion, the fearless scribe applied that principle to the sponsors themselves. He praised the idea of a prize for first fictions, but only having warned his patrons first that he "didn't want to get too far up Whitbread's bottom". Not much chance of that, Sid.

Spain was last week in mourning for its last living Nobel Laureate, Camilo José Cela. Born in the Galician hamlet of Iria Flavia in 1916, he had an English great-grandfather – a railwayman who helped build the line that runs past the family home. Expelled from four schools, Cela tried numerous careers, including medicine, acting, bullfighting and painting, before joining Franco's Board of Censors – which refused to sanction his own first novel. La Familia de Pascal Duarte was eventually published in Buenos Aires in 1942 and, when he won the Nobel for Literature in 1989, in the UK by Little Brown. Recently Granta published Journey to Alcarria, Cela's account of his 1946 walk through the heart of Spain, but he remains sadly under-represented here. When he died in Madrid, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia came to pay their respects. He is now buried beneath an olive tree in Iria Flavia, of which he was created marquess in 1996.

It's not many years ago that everyone was getting sentimental over The Bridges of Madison County, the Robert James Waller weepie filmed with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. It sold more than 12m copies and the author even put out a CD of songs to go with it. Now RJW has written a sequel, A Thousand Country Roads. Presumably, any publishing house in New York would have been happy to take it, despite the author's gloopy prose. However, Waller, who lives in East Texas, has entrusted a local publisher with the task. Iron Mountain Press, an arm of Front Street Books, which has just two shops in Texas, was offered it, having got to know the author through signing sessions; they publish in March. Waller, an old-fashioned country boy, remarked: "I got my start selling my books out of the back of my pickup truck in small towns in Iowa. I like to do things on a small scale."

While everyone is cheering Foyles as they fly the flag for indie bookshops, there were cries of despair north of the border as James Thin, the 154-year-old Scottish bookseller, went into voluntary administration with the likely loss of 130 jobs and five stores. Thins began trading in Edinburgh where, despite increasing competition, it has always enjoyed a loyal customer base. But commentators say it made a fatal mistake by paying £4m for the Volume One chain in 1994, a deal which added little profit. Surprisingly, not one publisher appeared to see the end coming. Many believe that the banks decided to move now because, just after Christmas, Thins was in a cash-rich position.