Authors Electric

I vaguely remember a time, itself now quite a lot of years in the past, when I briefly considered the idea of taking up history as a career. It was soon after I had acquired a degree in the subject, and I couldn’t imagine taking much interest in anything else, although neither could I identify many realistic career opportunities for a history graduate. I did attempt to become a history teacher just after that, but fortunately I realised in time that trying to teach history to teenagers would involve quite a bit of crowd control and not very much actual history. So, after a few desultory attempts to get a job at the Imperial War Museum – I had specialised in modern European history – I went into computer programming instead. You could do that in those days. Even after all this time there is something that lures me back to history. This is the same siren call that makes me spend hours in a fruitless quest for ancestors who are lost in the mists of time and who, if I could ask the...

I haven’t been very much in evidence for the past two weeks or so. In the unlikely event that anyone is wondering why, it’s because I’ve been away on a work trip. I’ve just returned from accompanying a group of over fifty Italian teenagers on a trip to Brighton and, as you can no doubt imagine, I’m knackered. Brighton is a curious place. An ultra-hip hangout for the right-on, it also has all the traditional trappings of British seaside resorts, as well as some haunting reminders of its past as a humble fishing village. Rough sleepers bed down not far from the Royal Pavilion, once the refuge of an overindulged Prince Regent with lavish tastes. Brighton struck me – though I could well be wrong about this – as perhaps being one of the very few remaining places, certainly in the UK, where someone might just be able to live on a shoestring while pursuing a creative career of the kind that is not usually particularly lucrative. Certainly Brighton has a thriving cultural scene, and a hea...