Authors Electric

In December 2005 Francis, Bertie, Archie and I were sitting in the semi-darkness outside the National Theatre.  We’d enjoyed our annual outing to the Private Eye entertainment and weren’t quite ready to go home. An unknown lady came up to us and asked if we’d like three free tickets to Coram Boy , Helen Donaldson’s adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s award-winning novel. At first we found it hard to believe that the offer was genuine but she convinced us, handed over the tickets and hurried away. The box office had one more ticket available so the four of us were in. The play was enthralling, terrifying, heart-breaking. The image that stays most vividly in my mind’s eye is the golden-lit rear alcove with a small orchestra playing music from The Messiah (first performed at the Foundling Hospital in 1750). The front of the stage is dark: there are small mounds which we, in the audience, know to be graves; desperate women are running to and fro, clutching the swaddled bodies of the...

As I was driving home recently it occurred to me just how rich the beautiful neck of the country I am lucky enough to dwell in is in writers and writerly stuff: Enid Blyton used to live just down the road from here, while in the opposite direction Milton laid low from the plague whilst scribbling the end of Paradise Lost. And close by, a walk I enjoy with my whippets takes us over Whiteleaf Hill, the inspiration for Kevin Crossley-Holland's Tumber Hill in his Arthurian trilogy, and of course ex-Bucks resident Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising is stuffed to bursting with local landmarks. I love it when a book I'm reading is written by a local, and even more when it refers to an area I know, and which I can visit: it creates an additional special link for me. Another fabulous writer who grew up around here was of course, the brilliant Terry Pratchett ... and very close to where I live is the bookshop which is credited as having been the inspiration for his creation of L-space* ...