Authors Electric

When I was a child, I wrote lists. Huge, long lists. I would have been about ten or so and I was the kid who handed in ten pages of story at school, when everybody else had written one or two. I liked writing, even back then. I'd even ask for extra homework if it was story-writing. But those lists. They were names. Made-up girls’ names – class registers for imaginary schools, and I’d painstakingly create all these little girls and then put the list in alphabetical order, miss one out and have to start all over again. I went through a lot of writing paper back then. I don’t know why I did it and I can’t even claim these were story characters as I never did anything else with them other than sort them into lists. But I was obsessed with them. I'd be teacher, reading the class register aloud. My parents used to take my brother and I around stately homes and castles when we were children. Now this did fire my imagination as I could be living there, coming down that staircase, eatin...

I’ve spent the last year or more waiting for heart surgery, and the last couple of months of this time have been particularly frustrating. This is because I got as far as having a pre-operation assessment at the end of May, and felt fairly confident that I would find myself on the operating table within a few weeks of it. Other family members even made their holiday arrangements around that date prediction, and I’m not really getting any better as I wait either! Still, I’ve managed to finish and publish two (or is it three? I’m starting to lose count) novels in the time since I first saw the cardiac surgeon, and I’m working on two more at this very moment, so it isn’t as if I’ve completely wasted the time, though anyone who sees the state of our house might imagine I have. In some ways this reminds me of the wait I had before giving birth to my first child. I was supposed to be resting in bed during the eight weeks before the due date because of raised blood pressure, but the problem...

It’s always fascinating perusing other people’s bookshelves and there is none better than a bookshelf in a holiday cottage – well I say cottage, this holiday let is actually a barn conversation complete with mezzanine reading nook! The reading matter is various, 1970s blockbusters by Jilly Cooper and Jeffrey Archer, more up to date novels by Victoria Hislop and Jacqueline Wilson. Books on British butterflies and birds. A book about the medicinal properties of honey and one about wind, thankfully not the flatulence variety, but a children’s book with picture of wind making mummy’s washing blow on the line - maybe daddy uses the tumble dryer! There is a book called No Dogs on the Bed – a cartoon book for adults and dog owners – a subtle reference to the rules on the property perhaps. The History of Stilton Cheese is wedged between a book discussing the divisions of Brexit and a book about female spirituality written by a man!!!! What can be deduced by such an eclectic collection? A...

                                                                              My Life in Libraries Moving from the junior to the senior library at the age of 13 was for me a rite of passage. I can remember the first book I borrowed from there,  Nancy Wake  by Russell Braddon, pictured. It didn’t have that vivid book jacket illustration, just a black and dusty cover with the title and author at the top of the spine. I had already read Russell Braddon’s  The Naked Island , a memoir about the author's trials in a Japanese POW camp, so I was keen to read more.   Nancy Wake, however, was somewhat different to my usual fare, causing my mother to raise a quizzical eyebrow when she asked to see what I had borrowed - a rite of passage indeed. Garston Library in Liverpool, near my then...

My late mother was a marvellous raconteur (or raconteuse, to be correct). She’d regale a whole room with her funny stories of life as a diplomat’s wife, or – cringemaking for us – the hilarious things her children had said and done. Growing up, I began to spot embellishments in these anecdotes, not to say downright twisting of the truth; but whenever I pointed this out (with a doubtless annoying puritanism), I’d be silenced. ‘So what?’ she’d roar. ‘It makes a far better story this way.’ Cue uproarious laughter from her audience.  It didn’t matter, of course it didn’t. Or not very much. But over the years I found myself increasingly treating her accounts of her early life, family history, relationships, discussions and quarrels with a large pinch of salt, to the point when I would doubt her version of a certain important event, only to find out later that it was true. The problem was, how could I tell? Knowing her talent for spinning dull, factual straw into exciting, gleaming, semi...

                                                      I recently read an article in the Guardian where it ‘admits’ it had ‘massively exaggerated’ the number of students who had access arrangements in examinations this year. They had apparently double-counted and wrongly reported. They seemed to feel they needed to apologise for this ‘mistake’ in case some people thought it would be offensive to suggest that students who needed help to get through exams should get it. The idea that some students receive extra time, scribes, laptops or other additional support seems to stir up controversy – even in 2025, and the comment I read on the article predictably brought out the loonies and extremists – but also worrying comments from apparent educational professionals and psychologists. The attitude amazed me, and may explain why it is stil...