Authors Electric

  Puma Three and a half years ago I had two cataract operations. I wasn’t happy with the first one, but was told I was worrying about nothing, it would resolve itself in a few weeks,  so I went ahead with the second op on the right eye, which was fine. My left eyelid was drooping, and cutting out light, which meant I could only read on a Kindle as I could alter the brightness and the size of the font. You can’t enlarge illustrations, or tables, or maps, which becomes increasingly frustrating and has a real impact on your understanding of certain books. My optician diagnosed ptosis, but warned me that consultants do not listen to opticians. How true that became. commissioned illustration for playing cards, that never went on sale Consultant after consultant told me I was imagining my poor vision, as if I forced my eye as open as wide as possible I could see perfectly well. Keeping it open was a different matter altogether. The worst response of all was from a consultant renowne...

These days, most people are familiar with Hogwarts, Harry Potter’s boarding school. The building itself is a castle, and seems to resemble an Oxbridge College or public school more than anything, if its dining hall and common rooms are anything to go by. Of course, there are magical additions which make it all the more appealing, such as staircases that change position, and invisible rooms. We can’t invent something from nothing, so we have to have a starting point. Castles are particular favourites in fantasy land, and C.S Lewis used them a lot. Cair Paravel is all that is good about a building like this, colourful and full of feasting and tapestries and golden goblets. The domain of the White Witch, with its stone statues in the courtyard created from living beings and a gateway guarded by wolves, is cold and grey and all that is bad. Harfang, inhabited by giants in The Silver Chair , gives a child’s view of a medieval castle, seen from the perspective of someone very small. The h...

I wanted to be a writer from the age of four, as soon as I realised that there was such a profession. And all through junior school I seemed to be on track; my headmaster put me in for every children’s writing competition there was, and I won a variety of delightful prizes provided by various companies such as a crate of creamed rice pudding for a story about a cow. Senior school was different, though. Although nearly all my teachers were excellent, the one who had a real down on me was my English teacher. I  would try to do experimental things in my stories, and I remember one in particular which came back with a red line through the whole thing, an F as the lowest mark she could possibly give, and the comment “You can’t do this”. I’d written a story about an escaped tiger, and was trying to build up the tension by switching scenes at crucial moments. Unfortunately this was the person who had the power to decide whether or not I took A level English. She took one look at me ...