Winds of Winter: Like George RR Martin, six other authors who took their time writing sequels, including Stephen King, Harper Lee and JRR Tolkien

The fifth instalment, A Dance with Dragons, came out in 2011 - meaning that we are up to 14 years and counting in between books. The series is the inspiration for the HBO television show Game of Thrones, but that has long since come to a conclusion, even though the novels’ finale is a long way from being published.

The Song of Ice and Fire is due to be a seven-book series, with A Dream of Spring the last mooted work in the saga. While those who are immersed in Westeros are desperate to see the new volume, Martin is not alone in leaving it a few years before releasing a sequel. Here are a few other authors who didn’t rush the follow-up.

But before that, a caveat - Martin is been explicit in saying he is writing a seven-book series, going so far as to name the unwritten volumes. Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Joseph Heller and John Updike may not have intended straight away to write sequels, so the situations are by no means exact parallels. However, that aside, it’s still interesting to sit back and see the other belated follow-ups.

Margaret Atwood

34 years between The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments

The Handmaid’s Tale was established as a classic of dystopian fiction, holding its own with 1984 and Brave New World, long before the world of Gilead was brought to life for millions in a chilling television series which started in 2017 - and which has taken the book’s story and run with it. Indeed, Atwood was consulted about the programme so it did not contradict her plans for The Testaments.

Atwood brought out The Testaments in 2019, a full 35 years after the first novel. It is set 15 years after the events in The Handmaid’s Tale, and will also become a television series.

JRR Tolkien

17 years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

You could argue that The Lord of the Rings trilogy isn’t really a sequel as such, but given the overlap of characters it’s fair to include here we think. In any case, The Hobbit came out in 1937 and the Lord of the Rings in 1954 to 1955.

Harper Lee

55 years between To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee remains one of the enigmas of 20th century literature. To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the defining works of the era, encompassing civil rights, race, honour and morality - for good reason is it a perennial on the GCSE syllabus. But after its success - and its transition to film, which Lee was involved in, she insisted she would never write another book.

So it was a surprise, a decade ago, to learn that Go Set a Watchman was to be published as a sequel. However, it soon became clear that it was in large part an unpublished earlier draft of Mockingbird, repackaged into a new book - several passages in the two are similar, and in some places identical.

John Updike

24 years between The Witches of Eastwick and The Widows of Eastwick

The Witches of Eastwick, released in 1984, was a successful book which has also seen life as a film (starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon), a television series and a musical. In 2008 The Widows of Eastwick was released.

Joseph Heller

33 years between Catch-22 and Closing Time

Catch-22 and its railing at the stupidity of war was so genre-defining that the phrase even entered the language. Published in 1961, it’s another of the 20th century’s canon of books that is on most people’s reading list.

In 1994, Heller returned to the John Yossarian, the captain who desperately tried to avoid fighting, in later life.

Stephen King

36 years between The Shining and Dr Sleep

Another book which has become an iconic film, the 1977 novel The Shining and the Overlook hotel have chilled readers (and viewers) for decades now. In 2013 King revisited the characters, with Danny Torrance living in Florida with his mother Wendy as she recovers from her injuries, and after being paid a settlement by the hotel - but some of the hotel’s unearthly residents find them, just as Danny realises he can develop supernatural powers. Dr Sleep was also made into a film.