Authors Electric

There’s an old saying that if you see a flock of crows, they’re rooks, and if you see a solitary rook, it’s a crow. It has been claimed by those who know these things that it isn’t true but it’s true-ish, as many of the old tales are.   Black birds congregating in large numbers in trees are mostly rooks, and crows are more likely to be alone or in pairs.  I remember being fascinated by a book about raven behaviour when a carcass is discovered by scouting birds. They report back to their clan by distinctive cries and then there’s a hierarchy of who feeds first, regulated by patterns of calls. I was enjoying the book very much but it descended into a miseryfest by the writer. He was cold, it was hard to find roadkill, the water ran out, etc. etc... It reminded me of my bête noir, him off the tele who goes off on ‘adventures’ all over the world and then moans into the camera because he’s all covered in boils or he’s left his horse in a field in Mongolia and they’ve all d...

With my article writing hat on, this month I've written a piece on Beatrix Potter, seeing as 2016 marks the 150 th anniversary of her birth. Doing the research it surprised me to discover that she was an indie author herself at the start of her writing career – apologies if everyone except me knew this already!! But for those of you who don't know her story, Beatrix loved wildlife and exploring the countryside and made pets out of all kinds of wild creatures such as rabbits, frogs, mice and the like. These little animals and birds were the inspiration for her stories in later life along with farm animals when Beatrix took up sheep farming in the Lake District. In 1893, Beatrix was on holiday in Eastwood, Dunkeld when she decided to write a letter to Noel Moore who was the five year old son of a former nanny, who was poorly. She wrote: “ My dear Noel, I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits… That let...