All going well here, as we get closer to official launch of the website. Keep your eyes on the countdown for that on the front page. Hopefully you’ve managed to have a look around and found some things of interest by now. Along with the …
Read MoreThe Lonely Londoners – Samuel Selvon
This is a wonderful opportunity for me to pay back someone for recommending a fantastic book to me, by doing the same and passing on the praise for it to you. I first heard The Lonely Londoners discussed on a radio 4 programme at the …
Read MoreHallelujah – Jeff Buckley
I know there are dozens of versions of this song, and some people swear by Leonard Cohen’s original but the emotion in the guitar playing as well as the voice of this one gets me every time. And I mean the original studio version rather …
Read MoreAndromeda (1830s) – Williams Etty
I find one of the best places to lose myself is the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, which has a wonderful collection of pre-Raphaelite and other artworks. But one which always draws my eye is Andromeda by William Etty. It’s not the best …
Read MoreThe book wot I wrote pt 1
I always intended to include an occasional series here about the process of writing, including a realtime posting of the difficulties I’m facing as I create new material. There will be posts coming up doing just this, looking at issues around my new novel, ‘The …
Read MoreA Carol Symphony
A Carol Symphony – Victor Hely-Hutchinson [CD – Naxos 8.557099] This is quite an unusual recommendation from me for several reasons, partly because it’s a classical music CD, which isn’t usually my main taste in listening, partly because it’s very Christmas related, and I’m not …
Read MoreReuben Reuben – Film
I adore this film! I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched it and the cinematography, the score, the acting and the story are absolutely wonderful. In this 1983 film, Tom Conti (who I was lucky enough to meet and gush over about …
Read MoreSilk – Alessandro Baricco
This short novella is quite simply one of the most enchanting things I’ve ever read. Don’t be put off if you’ve seen the film version with Kiera Knightly, take that as an indication that sometimes books just can’t be made into films and retain their …
Read MoreThe Iron Heel – Jack London
This 1908 novel, which along with We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, birthed the modern dystopian novel, and without it there would be no 1984, A Clockwork Orange or Brave New World, all of which have the influence of London’s novel stamped all over them. This book …
Read MoreWelcome to my World
It’s always a challenge knowing how to introduce yourself, and hopefully the welcome page will do that a little, but welcome to the beginning of an awfully big adventure, for me anyway. So what do you need to know? I’ve held a variety of jobs, …
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