Authors Electric

I've been thinking hard about this for some time and now I've come to a decision. I think this will be my last regular Authors Electric blog. I haven't been very well since March and though I'm not far off being restored, I feel that I have to jettison a few things. Writing a regular monthly blog - and after five years at it, trying to find something worth writing about - has become quite a burden, albeit a fulfilling one. However, I find I've picked up a few new projects - the 'ghost writing' I mentioned last month, Dora's story about escaping from Communist Bulgaria, the last part of which I am still waiting for, the birthstone story project and the strange fact that interest has been shown in my long-ago failed novel about Coleridge, the salvaging of which is now a point of honour - at the same time as losing some of my old energy. After all, the years are chugging on remorselessly. However, I won't give in to the temptation to write a f...

Dennis Hamley To start with, I must apologise for this being probably the most boring post ever put on the AE blogspot. It's all to do with the pictures. For as long as I have been posting, I have taken images off sites which specifically say 'images for' and copied and pasted them to the blog. They are specific to the topic of the blog and the text needs them. But apparently, Blogger has decided I'm not going to have them any more. Every time I copy them now, a rather curt warning notice tells me that I'm putting myself in danger. And when I try to call their bluff and preview what I've written, the preview just won't work. So I get rid of them quickly and it then it does. A great pity. So this month I'm not starting with the blog itself. Last month I went on at some length about books I had managed to clear out of the way and in the comments, Sue Price gently but firmly reproved me for not providing links. Well, point taken and here they are. I ...

You are reading this on my eightieth birthday. Yes,   The Big 8 . I don't find this easy to believe. Twenty years ago, reaching such a milestone seemed the merest fantasy. Ten years ago I thought it possible but extremely unlikely. And now, here I am. Made it.  I feel fine - actually, I feel about forty - and confidently expect in twenty years' time to get my congratulatory telegram from King William. It is, I suppose, a sort of Rite of Passage. And of course, such a rite makes one pause and survey. And this survey leads me to a stark cleavage in life which I don't think I'm the only one to experience - the great divide between private happiness and public misery. The first is never a given: we either work for it or it falls into our laps. Or both. The second is always with us - and, I'm hardly alone in thinking, particularly sharply now. How lucky I am to have the first in spades. Its profound aspects I'll leave because they are too deep for words. I'...