Authors Electric

Friday. End of the working week. Jobs to be fitted in. Always keeping one eye on the clock to make sure everything gets done. There's a meeting at the village church to discuss practical arrangements for an evensong by candlelight. Perhaps if we turn off the harsh electric lamps that glare down from the ceiling and let softer lights make pools and shadows in the large,old space, perhaps we will feel closer to the people from the past, who have lived and worshipped and died where we live now.   But we have to get the logistics right. Twenty-first century people, even in villages, are not as comfortable with the dark as our ancestors had to be. We must ensure they can arrive and leave safely and feel comfortable while they are here.  Our meeting's at 4.30. Already it's after 4.00. I’m in the laundry room and hurrying to unload the washing machine, to take clothes off hangers and put them in the airing cupboard, take out the previously aired clothes and pile them into a bask...

  ‘Why do you want to republish The Tuesday Boys ?’ my youngest brother asked. My immediate answer would be 'Because I love it,' and I know he agrees with me. Libby Purves and Claudia Myatt say the same. But is that sufficient reason to republish?   The Tuesday Boys is a book about a project to take eight young East London  children sailing. It began in 1975, fifty years ago. Will it make any sense to readers today? On one level, yes, belief in the potential for sail training to widen horizons and change lives has been in existence since the late c18th when the Marine Society began taking boys from London workhouses and providing initial training before they went to sea with the merchant navy. Through the c19th and early c20th, while Britain's need for seafarers remained obvious, charities continued to work to ensure that the most deprived inner city children (boys) had their chance to succeed at sea.  More general charities, such as sea scouts and sea cadets, ...

There was a moment, last autumn, when I was rummaging through old storage boxes and came across a container I’d never seen before. This happens periodically. It’s as if the layers of softening cardboard boxes, plastic crates and vintage suitcases convulse and shift to throw up unexpected treasure. Metal detectorists would understand the breath-stopping moments of surprise, the quickening excitement with which one picks out the unfamiliar item, brushes off the dirt, peers at the possible treasure.  This trouvaille  is a cuboid cardboard box, 8 ½” square and 6” deep. I’ve no idea what it had have held originally. A teapot perhaps? It was tied with string and marked LETTERS / Old Letters (Family). I prepared myself for disappointment: business correspondence, school Sunday letters kept out of duty.   Inside there was a mass of letters, hundreds of them, many on blue airmail forms  – I haven’t counted them all yet. I felt a thrill when the first letters I glimpsed w...

  His Own Little Ship FB Harnack for Yachting Monthly September saw the publication of Uncommon Courage: the Yachtsmen Volunteers or World War II  in a paperback edition. It’s given me the greatest pleasure particularly as the publisher’s budget -- and editorial goodwill -- was extended to cover 16 extra pages for additional material as well as the inclusion of photographs. People dug deep in their collections to assist. Kate, at the Adlard Coles office, was endlessly patient as I continually wheedled more in; publisher Liz waved ideas through. When I hold its neat pocket-friendly shape now, I feel it's stuffed full of other people's kindnesses. The new frontispiece comes courtesy of Yachting Monthly magazine (thank you YM editor, Theo Stocker). It’s a drawing by FB ‘Fid’ Harnack (b1897) who served in both the first and second world wars. The figure of the officer gazing through binoculars at the yard where his yacht has been laid up, while his ship – is it a destroyer? – ste...

At the close of one of the most memorable occasions in my life, Francis handed back the copy of my speech he'd had in safekeeping, and said ''That's your next month's blog written anyway.' 'Oh no,' I replied, prissily, 'It doesn't work like that.' It was one of those happy occasions when we were both right. I knew I was right (of course!) a speech won't make a blog, but Francis was right er . When Blog Day approaches each month I wake in the early hours wondering what event or idea the jolly old subconscious is going to throw up as this month's Chosen One. And yes, as he'd obviously pre-guessed, it was our evening in The Painted Hall.  Not totally for the glory, however - though it was glorious. I thought I had filed it away in some private happy place but during the last few days, I have been reading books by WW2 Wrens, in preparation for a talk about Rozelle Raynes's  Maid Matelot . A friend reminded me that, although ...

  The River Deben from Kyson Point by John Roberts I edit a small, local, bi-annual magazine for the River Deben Association in Suffolk. It’s the river’s parish magazine so (in the manner of parish mag editors) I take as much time and trouble as if it were Country Life or the National Geographic .  My son Bertie manages the layout and we publish articles about birds and boats, people and paintings, saltmarshes and seawalls. I realise now that I was destined for the Deben from the day that my father (to be) returned from his RNVR service in World War 2 declaring that he never wanted to go anywhere else. So he set up a yacht agency. Less than two years later, my mother (to be) found her way to the river wanting to buy a boat… Skip along a few more years and a larger boat was purchased as my brother and I were demanding more space. Enter Peter Duck. In 1960 a young artist named John Roberts arrived in Woodbridge on the River Deben, planning to buy a boat and sail away. He was ...