Authors Electric

Since 23 March, when lockdown was announced in the UK, I’ve found myself seeking solace in familiar books. This isn’t something I do regularly – unlike my eldest daughter, who re-reads certain books repeatedly, what she calls ‘comfort reading’, particularly at times of stress. Apparently reading the Harry Potter books or Jane Austen’s entire oeuvre is the thing to help get her through public exams or, indeed, starting as a junior doctor during a pandemic. She also turns to familiar films – almost anything by Disney, various (often rather cheesy) musicals, etc. at such times. For me, generally, if I’ve read a book or seen a film so recently that I can remember the ending (let alone how the plot takes us there), it’s far too soon to experience it again. ( Star Wars is about the only exception – oh, and The Adventures of Robin Hood ; I can never have too much of Errol Flynn’s blithe, sunny optimism and desperate historical inaccuracy…) My only regular re-reading is the ann...

I’ve never been a ‘foodie’, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘a  person  who  loves   food  and is very  interested  in different  types  of  food ’, let alone any type of gourmet or epicure. I once traumatized my closest friend in my early teens by saying I’d be happy enough to live on food pills. I had read and watched a lot of science fiction in which the shiny folk of the future (this was the 1970s and 1980s when the iconic year 2000 was still a long way off) wouldn’t waste precious leisure time cooking and would simply knock back a couple of pills to keep themselves going while conquering new worlds. ( Soylent Green hadn’t penetrated my consciousness at that point.) My friend recently reminded me of that – in her eyes – faux pas. Food had always been important to her and her family, whereas I was brought up on a typical British working-class family diet for that time: meat and two veg, always potatoes, a roast on Sunda...

This week has seen the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) on 8 May and also the annual Europe Day on the 9th,  a celebration of all the years of peace in the heart of the continent. As part of the commemoration of those six years of World War II that came to an end in May of 1945, I was delighted to interview the authors of  six novels brought together in a collection titled   The Road to Liberation . The authors - Marion Kummerow, Marina Osipova, Rachel Wesson, J.J. Toner, Ellie Midwood and Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger -  offer a fascinating range of perspectives on that global conflict. They hail from various countries – Germany, Russia, Ireland, the USA – and their books (in the words of its blurb) ‘will transport you across countries and continents during the final days’ of the Second World War, ‘revealing the high price of freedom—and why it is still so necessary to “never forget”’. While my own writing has focused on a far earlier era, a...

As I’m writing this, it’s Easter weekend in the UK. A strange one, it must be said, owing to the unusual times we’re living in, but rather than dwell on the world of today, I thought I would delve back into past blog posts and past centuries. (That latter is something I’m finding increasingly soothing at the moment…) The following is an adapted post from a couple of years ago – with a link to a reading by myself of a snippet of my novel describing the Easter celebrations mentioned. (One of the things I have been doing in lockdown is trying to post readings of my work – though I’ve been let down by one IT device after another, until this slightly wobbly early attempt is the best I could manage before the relevant season disappeared into the past!) (Image from Wikipedia) Good Friday followed by Easter Sunday marks the end of Lent, the most solemn ‘festival’ in the Christian calendar, the 40 days leading up to when Jesus died on the cross and then is believed to have come ...