Blogs

I’ve got Janice Galloway the wrong way round. I’m working backwards from her autobiographical and award winning memoirs to her earlier works. This is a collection of short stories, musings and the setting of a stage play (Scenes from Life No.27: Living In). ‘Fearless’ is my favourite, which is no surprise, I just ate up anything autobiographical and this is from that genre. ‘And he had these terrible specs. Thick as the bottoms of milk bottles,...

I’ve always meant to read this novel. Now I’ve spoiled it and watched the Hammer House of Hokum directed by James Watkins, with the screenplay by Jane Goldman, first. I’ve always liked a bit of Gothic. The name Arthur Kipps immediately makes me think of Pip and John Mills. I suppose we make do with the boyish Daniel Radcliffe as the man that is sent to settle the estate of the late Mrs Alice Drablow. Drablow is a Dickensian sounding name and...

As you might be able to tell from the pictures , we had a fantastic get-together this Wednesday at the Wheatsheaf in London, where we managed to raise 135£ for The Railway Children . Rhiannonw read some beautiful poems – including one inspired by last week's IP, a first for me - Kevin Marman, aka Stan, gave a very spirited (and poignant) reading from his book In the Day , Barely Black Francis had us first laughing and then deeply moved, while...

The last of David Hare’s spy trilogy. We have some salt of our youth in us and old Worricker has more than most. Has he enough to bring down the government, to bring down the Prime Minister? Well, let’s start with a little jazz, a little flitting about, a short-stay in Germany. Worricker and Tyrell are lying low. An M15 agent is told by her counterpart the difference between Germany and Britain is ‘Germans don’t like cameras’. They don’t like to...

What a terrific evening! A great atmosphere and very well organised by Luke, much thanks and praise are due to his relaxed and yet very effective event management skills and style of getting things done. Everyone who read surpassed any advance expectations I had. This includes the three writers who I had not found my way to reading before; Akimba, Rob Newlyn and the young man who read after me (Aidan?) I had no idea what to expect from them and...

I had the good fortune to discuss writing with Phil Klay, a brilliant author whose debut collection of short stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Redeployment , is publishing this Thursday via Canongate. He told me about what got him writing and what kept him at it – about the processes behind his work, his time in the marines and the writing communities that he’s relied on along the way. How did you get started writing? I was always...

Anne Michaels’ collections of poetry have won a shedload of international prizes, but as any literary agent knows, there’s no money in poetry. Poets that write prose tend to be good at the small things that make the larger things. This is quite a simple story of love lost and found. Jean loves Avery. Avery loves Jean. They have a baby, but it’s stillborn. They drift apart. Jean has this thing with Lucjan. He’s Polish an orphan from the Warsaw...

There’s too much football on TV. In my day it used to be highlights of Archie McPherson’s blow-away hair and sometimes Arthur Montford on a Sunday. Then we had Football Italia. Now we’ve got every game in the world all showing at the same time and billed as the biggest the best and the most important. Tickets for this match were selling for 800 Euros. John Terry, former England captain, we were told was in the stadium. I like Barcelona because...

I’m on the edge of my seat for Wednesday – when ABCtales will be meeting at the Wheatsheaf in London for another night of poetry and prose. Readings start at 7pm and the reading list is absolutely superb – if you haven't been to a reading yet there really is nothing like hearing stuff live. I can’t wait to see you all there. It’s been another week of high-quality writing on ABC. Our poem of the week is one of those that just blindsides you – a...

I’ve an admission to make. I thought I’d a fair idea what a Turk was, but I looked up Caicos in the dictionary. Only it wasn’t there. Somebody’s being fiddling with the Oxford English Dictionary or I’m a bit daft. If we take away all the plausible explanations and are left with only the daft ones then it was probably me. In case we didn’t get it, where not up to speed, a black cop told Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) what it was all about. Turks...