Authors Electric

Perhaps this is a lockdown experience or perhaps it’s a reversion to earlier ways of living and working. We, like so many other families, find ourselves working from home, each in our separate spaces. Bertie’s in the attic, laying-out books with Indesign; Francis somewhere downstairs trying to find the right angle of physical endurance for solid hours of Private Eye deadlines and me … well, to be honest, I’m most characteristically surrounded by WW2 naval memoirs, copies of Lloyd’s Registers and overflowing scribbled papers … in bed. Together with my faithful laptop, miraculously fact-checking and emailing, tweeting and posting. Thus Golden Duck (UK) ltd keeps busy. One of my favourite Margery Allingham novels Flowers for the Judge (1936) tells the story of Barnabas and company, publishers since 1810 at the Sign of the Golden Quiver. It’s a perfect setting for a classic murder mystery: an enclosed location, limited number of suspects, distinctive atmosphere, ra...

Festive flags at Boomtowm  I’ll never feel quite the same about festivals. Over the last few years I’ve written several posts in response to my happy experiences at the Felixstowe Book Festival . But I've usually been looking from a performer's point of view -- never exactly undervaluing the efforts of organiser Meg Reid and her volunteers, but not setting them centre stage.  Earlier this year, observing my daughter Georgie Thorogood turning her vision of Dixie Fields (her debut country music festival) into reality, I began to get a glimpse of the extraordinary level of challenge faced by all festival organisers. (And here's to you too, Ros Green, at the Essex Book Festival. ) In May I wrote a blogpost apologising to my fictional character, Lottie Livesey, for giving her a festival organiser's role to ensure she was sufficiently off-stage in Pebble to allow my child characters an unimpeded adventure. Poor Lottie, when I'd side-lined her previously (in  A...