内容摘要：Tourism, the local economy and arts jobs are all in its sights.

Tourism, the local economy and arts jobs are all in its sights.

"Apart from everything that everybody's been saying about him - that he was an unbelievable champion of the arts and so on - he also had a real gift for friendship," he said. "He was a very strong ally in bad times."Sir Salman added: "He was a great programme maker, and I hope that's how he will be primarily remembered."

Yentob leaves a "colossal" legacy, he said. "He's one of the giants of British media in the last generation, and I think he will be remembered as a maker of great programmes, as an enabler of great programmes."The pair's personal and professional relationship extended to Yentob famously enlisting Sir Salman to take part in a spoof arm wrestle for a scene in BBC mockumentary W1A."People keep asking me who won," Sir Salman said. "And of course nobody won because it was complete fraud."

In November, the author will publish a short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction to be written since the stabbing.The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman's controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died aged 87

was a titan of modern African literature - a storyteller who refused to be bound by jail and exile.But after feeling that something was not right in his body, he sought out an MRI scan which revealed the tumour.

"I remember the room turning into like this tunnel, and Shayne was sat to my left, and I completely shut down."He was asking all the right questions, but I remember at that point, I sort of went into this self-preservation mode, and because of the nature of it no-one truly knew how to operate."

After visiting hospitals in Nottingham, Sheffield, and Lincoln, a surgeon in Leicester figured out how to proceed with the removal, Mr Lewis said.He was told the tumour might be cancerous, and there was no way of knowing until it would have been taken out.