Authors Electric

My earliest memory of the Narnia stories is watching a cartoon version of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with my little daughter and my mother. I thought it would probably be awful, but in fact it wasn’t. The artwork was delightful and it was well narrated. At the point where the knife is poised above Aslan, my daughter burst into tears and cried out, ‘oh, don’t hurt him!’ ‘Turn it off!’ said my mother, ‘it’s upsetting her!’   I didn’t because it was crucial to see it through to the end, all tears dried.   I found the other books in the series progressively harder going but I know plenty of people who love all of them. Forty years on, I found myself walking through a wardrobe into a snow-covered landscape and that lamp post. It was completely enchanting. This was at Mottisfont House, a local NT property, once a priory and later converted into a manor house. It contains, among other delights, a Rex Whistler room with trompe l’oeil devices. For Christmas, the house was...

Debbie Young Evokes Her Dream Office (with a little help from the National Trust...) Debbie Young, going places... "Where do you write?" asked a very pleasant lady at a talk I gave recently to the Cheltenham Writers' Circle. I gave my standard answer: how lucky I am to have my own study in my  Victorian Cotswold cottage , with a big desk facing a window that looks out over the garden. But next morning, when I sat down to write there, I shrieked as a sharp pain shot from my spine to my ankle, reminding me that lately I had been spending far too long at my desk-with-a-view - and I felt  desirous of change . Prompted by the arrival of my new  National Trust  card in the post the day before, and licensed by my friend and mentor  Orna Ross  to fill the creative well with a weekly "create date" with self, I stowed my purse, my shades, and my notebook and pen into my backpack, donned my walking boots, and set off to nearby  Dyrham Park . ...