After three days of the London Book Fair, I’ve unpacked my memories and my bags of freebies. All the usual suspects were there, such as bowls of sweeties on the stands, people in unsuitable footwear, and long queues for overpriced sandwiches.

Olympia is vast, but every corner of every hall was filled.

Can you spot land-locked Switzerland?

Books Are My Bag grows bigger by the year.

The PEN Literary Salon was a popular destination, especially when the Julian Fellowes entertained with talk of Downton Abbey, his new venture Belgravia, and the eternal truths of writing (eg ‘The trick of life is to be undisappointing’).

While there’s always an Author of the Day programme, authors are not the main focus of the book fair, even if publishers would find it hard to create many books without them.

Still, there was a goodly contingent of authors, including many independent authors.

On Tuesday, Alison Morton launched Insurrectio. If you think I missed off an N, you need to get acquainted with her Roma Nova series. 

While authors come in all shapes and sizes, there are sometimes uncanny similarities. 

Not literally sisters, but literary sisters. In the middle is Helena Halme who writes The Englishman series. Her latest title, The Finnish Girl, is out today. Children’s author Karen Inglis is on the right.

Author HQ may have been relegated to the back of the venue, but it was as packed as ever.

The fair is now over, the final stragglers shepherded out by tannoy at 5pm on Thursday. But today indie authors can attend the Indie Author Fringe here.

And it’s only 11 months to go till #LBF17.