Authors Electric

 First a greeting for the Solstice:   I’ve been a writer of sorts for as long as memory serves me, but my salaried working life was as a psychologist. Having both things going on was (mostly) good, I think. I was steered towards psychology when to the anguish of some of my schoolteachers, I didn’t want to teach myself or be a nurse. Then a new course in the subject was about to start at Brunel Polytechnic. I’d never heard of it. A promotional leaflet was sent round to schools and when my Headmistress saw it, she thought of me. I don’t know why, but it felt right straight away and my interview with Professor Jahoda confirmed the feeling. Professor Jahoda: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jahoda-marie  Among very many lucky things in my life was being taught by Marie Jahoda. When I’d flunked my O level maths and couldn’t take up my place at Brunel, she wrote and encouraged me to try again, as Faculty wouldn’t waive the requirement, although she’d asked. I did, and pas...

Being the world’s slowest reader, I finally got to grips with Wolf Hall because of the television version, and because having already read Beyond Black I knew the lady is a writer of genius. It’s a measure of how wonderful I find it that after only ten days I‘m on page 313, which is nearly half way through. I thought the TV version was fantastic, too. Almost every scene, up to and including the execution, was mind-blowing. (I didn’t bother with a spoiler alert there, because if anyone doesn’t know who got the chop it might make them read the book. Sorry. I’m being silly.) Sitting in me lonely writer’s bed this morning, though – reluctant to give up and get up halfway through a chapter – I fell to wondering what was the motor for this exhaustive, off-centre, and truly rather frightening revivification of English history. Coupled with an interview or two I’d heard earlier (thank you, World Service), I realized it might be an investigation of what the West is going to ‘do’ about t...