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The Bradford Telegraph and Argus covers Pirate Cinema today, thanks to David Barnett, who explains how Pirate Cinema came to be set in his paper’s town.

Mr Doctorow says he didn’t just pluck Bradford out of a hat – he’s visited the city several times and spent some time here in 2009 when the big UK science fiction convention, Eastercon, was held in the city.

Eastercon comes again to Bradford next year, and Doctorow is hoping to attend. But he also decided on Bradford because the city was mentioned in a report written by a web entrepreneur for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in 2009 on digital inclusion, and how some communities – especially in post-industrial northern cities – were at risk from lack of web access.

He said: “The conclusion of the research was about the impact on certain communities in terms of not only their freedom of speech but also employment, education, access to health.