Writers and their notebooks

As the British Library launches a website devoted to writers' notebooks and manuscripts, Discovering Literature, novelist Lawrence Norfolk takes a look at his own notebooks, and talks to AS Byatt, John Cooper Clarke and David Mitchell about theirs.

He's joined in the studio by Wendy Cope, Bidisha, and Rachel Foss of the British Library for a discussion - chaired by presenter Samira Ahmed - about notebooks, creativity, and how the digital age - which sees many novelists write straight onto a computer - might be changing literature.

The notebook can be the seed of a novel, or many novels, or it can be an act of prevarication and diversion. Thomas Hardy kept several different types of notebook, including one called 'Facts', in which he noted down local newspaper articles that caught his eye. One such story was 'Wife for Sale', which later became the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.