It wasn’t all bad

The bestselling writer Jojo Moyes has stepped in to save a major adult literacy scheme after its sponsors pulled out. Moyes’ £360,000 donation will enable the Quick Reads scheme to run for three more years while longer-term funding is sought. Since 2006, the UK scheme has distributed 4.8 million short novels to people with lower literacy levels. “Every now and then you have to make a decision about whether you’re going to make a difference,” Moyes said.

Forty years after losing both of his feet to frostbite during an ascent of Everest, 69-year-old Chinese climber Xia Boyu has finally conquered the peak. He is only the second double amputee to climb Everest, and the first to do it from the Nepal side. He lost his feet after a climb in 1975, as a result of giving his sleeping bag to a sick friend during a storm. On the same day this week (when spring weather made the summit accessible), Steve Plain, from Australia, set a new record by climbing the highest peaks on all seven continents in 117 days – four years after breaking his neck in a surfing accident.

The Australian Red Cross has paid tribute to “the man with the golden arm”: a retired railway worker whose blood donations have saved the lives of an estimated 2.4 million babies over the past 60 years. James Harrison, now 81, gave the last of his 1,173 donations last week in Sydney, on the advice of doctors. Probably as a result of a transfusion he had received aged 14, his blood contains a rare antibody that is used to make Anti-d – a lifesaving treatment required by about 17% of pregnant women in Australia.