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Afternoon tea became popular in Britain in the early nineteeenth century and tearooms are still popular, even in this era of American-style coffee houses. Sofia Hericson from our Charing Cross Road branch suggests the best guides to tracking down the best places for tea - and cake - in London and shows how she put together our new teatime window display.

The afternoon tea has been around since the 19th century, but only recently have I been made aware of it's soothing and relaxing benefits. The luxury of indulging yourself in the richness of a three-tiered stand of cakes full of colour and flavour is something short of paradise.

Imagine living in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's Mad Hatter's Tea Party, or in a world like Hansel and Gretel's, without the evil witch or even in a more 21st-century pop-style candyland like the one in Katy Perry's 'California Gurls' video. This is the stuff dreams are made of.

And so going out to a tearoom on a Saturday afternoon with your friends is one might say as fulfilling as going on a night out. And with the range and growing offer all around London is now more and more affordable to let yourself dive into the sweet world of tea and cake.

There are many absolutely fascinating tearooms around London, such as the Drink Shop & Do, Primrose Bakery, Bea's of Bloomsbury Cakes, The Breakfast Club and so on. But don't take my word for it, in September last year Black Dog Publishing, published a great little book by Zena Alkayat called Tea and Cake London.

This year another great book came out, this time published by Allegra Publications, called Great Cake Places: London 2012, edited by Jeffrey Young and Jacqueline Malouf. These little gems, list some of the most amazing tea, cake and coffee Houses in London, differentiating and highlighting them on individuality, price, type of venue, as well as dietary information, such as gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, etc. But be warned: these books can turn out to be dangerous if you use them more as to-do lists rather than just reference books.

My idea when I bought these books was to go to each one of these tea houses, one per month until I'd checked them all off the list. Well the only problem with this otherwise perfect plan was that committing to such list would have left me broke, as some of these places are quite expensive indeed.

And so started the idea of having more tea parties. And I'm telling you, any reason is a good one to do so, either because I needed signatures for a petition or because it was Christmas, or because... Well you get the idea... The fact is that as the very crafty person I am, I grew very fond of the art of baking.

Baking is no longer just a job for mothers and wives who get recognition by feeding their families but a craft that has become more and more popular between women and men alike of our generation. With the beginning of this century things changed greatly and baking as well as a lot of other crafts is becoming a trendy, revolutionary and savvy act. The combined effects of awarness of our carbon foorprints and the credit crunch mean that urban self-sufficiency, foraging and permaculture have become big things amongst young families with more and more people cultivating, crafting, cooking, building and, indeed, baking.

The art of baking is an elegant, cute, charming and professional one. And so is the art of hosting the perfect tea party. That's why we decided to put together this great selection of books for your pleasure, in a window display here at our Charing Cross Road branch and, in keeping with what I've talked about in this post, the props in this window have been handcrafted, borrowed and/or recycled.

Hand made bunting:

Handmade recycled cardboard cupboard:

Whether you want to indulge on a great afternoon tea around London or you wish to become the best Tea and Cake party host/hostess and baker in your social group, we've got the book for you. Enjoy!

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Author Richard Beard, Director of the National Academy of Writing, explains how the popularity of eBooks is making video an essential component.

Until very recently, the web was all about words. Those of us who came late to the internet, through the misfortune of being born too early, couldn't have imagined how computers would have youngsters reading and writing as if television had never existed.

Ah, those were the days. As the web spread world-wide, anyone could write a text-based blog but a short film still required most of the staff of London Weekend Television.

No longer. Even literary websites are now conceding the value of video as a promotional tool. There is a paradox here. At The National Academy of Writing we want to encourage text-based (as opposed to caption-based) reading and writing. But to attract more readers to our site we've decided to make some videos.

This is not, I think, a lack of faith in the power of the written word. Instead, it's a realization that video and screen have a relationship similar to word and page. They fit.

Our videos were produced and directed by one-man-band Ziggy Evitts, who explains that 'video is what people increasingly expect from screens. We're so keyed in to the language of images and signs that it's the quickest way to give a feel for an organization.

The Academy wanted to demonstrate our unique Masterclass, especially now the word 'Masterclass' has become vague with overuse. We've tried describing it but the best way is to see it in action: 'The style of the video immediately gives an idea of what the NAW Masterclass process is like,' Ziggy says, 'it communicates the vibe, the energy.'

NAW operates in the literary world, but like a bookshop we offer an experience that isn't limited to words on the page. The Academy has personalities and an atmosphere. This is what video communicates more immediately than text.

There's also a pragmatic consideration. Video plays better on smart-phones than text, and Cisco Systems estimates that 90% of web traffic will be driven by video by the end of 2013. The monitor on the desktop, where text was once so readable, has been superseded by video grabs on mini-screens in the street.

Remember MTV? Music has already been through this process, to the point where a song would be unimaginable without its video. The video complements the music, and the time may be right for LTV, where the video introduces the words.

Literature Television: the new gateway to the wonderful world of books.

The National Academy of Writing is a partner of Foyles bookshop. NAW runs 10-week writing courses in London, and as part of the course NAW Writer-Patrons answer questions from NAW members in the Gallery at Foyles Charing Cross. For more information, visit the NAW website. Ziggy Evitts makes videos for websites: ziggyevitts@hotmail.com

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Calum Kerr is the Director for National Flash-Fiction Day, which takes place across the UK on 16th May. An anthology, Jawbreakers, featuring flash-fiction from Ian Rankin, Tania Hershman, Vanessa Gebbie, Jenn Ashworth, Calum himself and a host of others, being released to coincide with the day, is pubished later this month. Here Calum takes about the origins of the shortest of short story forms and offers his tips on writing your own.

"I'm running National Flash-Fiction Day," I tell people.

"That's nice," a lot of them say. "What's that, then?"

Surprisingly, it's not that simple a question to answer. If you look around for a consistent definition of the term, it's hard to find one.

The term 'flash-fiction' was first used in the title of anthology of short, short stories back in 1992, but they've been around as long as stories. Chekhov and Kafka wrote them. Hemingway famously wrote a story in just 6 words: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." So, what is it?

Well, one thing that every definition does agree on is that flash-fiction should be very short, though the specified length of them varies. Some places define it as 150 words or under, or 250 or 500. The upper limit certainly seems to be 1000 words.

So, what other definitions do we need to play with? Well, some people think a flash-fiction should be written within a time limit - 10 minutes say. This is a useful idea, especially for those just starting in the medium, as it forces concision. Certainly, I would say that a flash-fiction should be written in a single burst, one period of constant writing in which the story is both started and finished.

Another idea associated with flash-fiction is that there should be no ideas in the writer's mind before he or she sits down; that the whole thing should emerge from a prompt unseen before the first moment of writing; that the prompt should be allowed into the brain and the story should flow without planning or preparation. This is probably the closest thing to a true definition of flash that I can find. It is the following of a prompted thought to its narrative conclusion which sums up the flash.

But, of course, you would expect me to suggest that there is much more to the process of flash-fiction writing. All I can do is tell you how I work.

Sometimes I work from prompts - images, titles, lyrics or lines of dialogue from books, films and songs, a random overhearing, a word or phrase suggested to me, etc. - but sometimes an idea will simply come to me in the that magical and unknowable way that they do.

Whichever route leads to the story's inception, I follow the same procedure. I gather the phrase, the images, the word, or the idea and I put it aside until I have the chance to write it. I do my level best not to think about what the story might be that would emerge from the prompt or idea until I actually start writing, and then I let it out. That's not always possible, but I try not to plan too much of the story in my head, before time, but let the creative muscles in my brain work on them only during the actual writing process.

I don't set a time-limit or a word count for myself. I let the story spin out for as long as it needs to, and become as long as it needs to be. Over the past year, when I have been writing a story a day, this has led to stories of between 6 words and 1600. The majority have, indeed, fallen into the 300-500 word range, but that was by design of story, rather than any emphasis on length.

The design for story is the key. A flash-fiction should be a snapshot of a larger story: a part which can represent the whole. It attempts to include all the same things as a longer story - characters, plot, description, theme, etc. - but to do as much of it by implication rather than statement. It is a distillation of story which allows a narrative to take a single idea from point A to point B, and imply all the letters beyond. I believe that it is, in many ways, the ultimate expression of the short-story, requiring exactly the right words in exactly the right order, to create a whole world in the minimum length.

And that's it. Those are my thoughts on flash-fiction today. Ask me tomorrow, you might get a different answer. But that's the joy of flash, if you don't like this answer, another will be along very soon!

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