Authors Electric

          Well it's nearly that time of year - yes, Valentine's day is almost upon us once again. Mostly it makes me cringe, but although part of me wants to exclaim "Pfffftttt!" and throw up my hands in disgust, I'm not totally without a heart. You may find it hard to believe but beneath this gruff exterior hides a true romantic: just not the slushy sort.              For this post I was going to pose the question "If you were a book, which one would it be?" but with Valentine's Day looming, it sounded too much like the sort of thing Cilla would ask contestants on Blind Date. Once that image was in my mind it was too horrible to pursue and I could feel my teeth beginning to grind.            Then I thought a bit more about it. One of the Valentine's Day rituals is of course the Special Meal, with the table cosily set for tw...

At the age of eight I was discovered curled up in a chair reading my Dad's battered old Penguin edition of The Iliad . I'd like to claim I was a child prodigy, but it really would be a blatant lie: when the book was gently prised out of my fingers and replaced with a version more accessible to my tender years, I found it much easier going. The Iliad was followed in quick succession with The Odyssey which I liked even better: I still have the copy, bought by my Mum, back in the days when hardbacks were Expensive. And that was followed by a collection of Greek and Roman myths, by Roger Lancelyn-Green - and I liked his Robin Hood much better than some of the others I also read. It was this with this discovery of multiple versions of Robin Hood that it slowly dawned on me that Not All Stories were Original. (See? Told you - definitely not a Child Prodigy.) Sometimes it was a re-telling of a story which someone else had written. Sometimes the writer did a brilliant job, a...