It's been an interesting few days. Earlier this week, I visited the book-sorting grotto in the basement of Oxfam St Giles, where I was given the opportunity to value a stack of old first editions.

A mint copy of Graham Swift's 1996 novel Last Orders caught my eye, but the author signed so many copies of the book that the unsigned copies have ended up slightly devalued.

Still, it was in good nick, and probably worth about a tenner.

Talking of tenners, I reckon you can get quite a few second-hand books for under that amount if you shop around these days, but I'm afraid I broke one of my golden rules the other day and splashed out.

The book in question was a 1951 first edition of HV Morton's In Search of London.

It had been sitting on the shelf in the Abingdon Oxfam for a couple of weeks.

The first time I saw it, the £12.99 price tag put me off, but second time round I plucked up the courage and took it to the till, together with a reasonably handsome Odhams reprint of Winston Churchill's My Early Life from 1930.

I haven't tucked into the Morton yet, which came in a colourful, complete dust jacket, but the Churchill, which I also have in paperback (I borrowed my dad's) has already made me chuckle.

He was seriously injured when he was a kid because he jumped off a bridge to escape his chums in a game of catch. The book is packed with similar entertaining anecdotes.

It's that time of year again - the Oxford Literary Festival starts at the end of the month and a chunky programme landed on my desk the other day.

I couldn't believe the size of it - there must be hundreds of events taking place at Christ Church and the roll call of top names is seriously mouthwatering.

I always struggle to get the time to attend talks with my favourite authors, so I haven't pencilled in too many appointments.

I have, however, reserved some tickets for Francesca Simon's visit to the town hall, because my lads are big Horrid Henry fans.

There is no point in bearing grudges, but I am still upset that I was not allowed to attend a Clive James talk a couple of years ago. I would have loved it if the erudite Aussie had signed a copy of Unreliable Memoirs for me, but work came first.

It doesn't look like he's coming to Oxford, so perhaps I'll catch him at Hay, where I'm sure the sun will shine this year.