Fueled by the wine still drunk each year by the British royal family, I had a very agreeable reading last night at Queen Victoria's vineyard, which is part of Weingut Frick in Hochheim, near Mainz, where the river Main flows into the Rhine. 

The young Queen Victoria visited the place in 1845 with her husband Albert. She loved the district and the wine and agreed that the vineyard could bear her name - so long she got some each year. The tradition has been maintained, and a very fine dry Riesling it is. A smart woman, Victoria. 

The reading must have been a success, they gave me a bottle of the 2011.

I will be in Canada from 4-12 June to  promote both the travelling exhibition of the Lascaux cave and the Bruno novels.

Martin Walker Author Talk & Sign
Wednesday, 4 June 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore
2220 McGill College Avenue, Montreal, Quebec H3A3P9

Thursday, 5 June all day events and the Lascaux exhibition, Montreal

Friday & Saturday 6 & 7 June
Bloody Words
Crime book festival, Toronto

More dates expected so watch this space.

A very big thank you to all my German-language readers, who this week have the new Bruno novel, Reiner Wein, at number 2 in the German best-seller list on Der Spiegel, number 1 in Austria and number 1 in Switzerland. 

This is an amazing and heartwarming success and on Sunday evening my wife Julia and I were taken to a celebratory dinner by our German publishers, Diogenes, at the legendary Zurich restaurant Kronenhalle. 

Beneath original paintings by Picasso, Miro and Chagal we dined on Wiener Schnitzel and fresh asparagus, and drank champagne and Chasse-Spleen 2005 and toasted Bruno.

On this year's German book tour, and learned in Speyer that my new novel, The Resistance Man (Reiner Wein in German) has gone straight into the Der Spiegel best seller list at number 2. 

For my reading at the Osiander bookshop they kindly served a lovely Bergerac red wine from Ch Vieux Touron. It went down well after a litre of homemade red beer at the Domhof brewery, with Bratwurst, sauerkraut and black bread, eaten in the shadow of the splendid 11th century cathedral of red and white stone. 

Then we had a great reading in Freiburg, one of my favourite German towns, and last night was in the Moselle Valley, in the picturesque medieval town of Cochem, where we had an audience of 200 people in the old Capuchin monastery. My friend Brigitte Geibel, of Weindepot Geibel, had brought in lots of Bergerac wine from Ch Tourmentine to go with the roast duck and figs that we ate. And before that, we had shared a wonderful bottle of Collet champagne at her wine store to go with the chicken soup she had made to keep me fortified. 

Next stop is a reading in a cinema at Bad Sodem, near Frankfurt, and then the Imperial Riding School in Vienna. .