Authors Electric

                                                          My Life in Libraries Moving from the junior to the senior library at the age of 13 was for me a rite of passage. I can remember the first book I borrowed from there,  Nancy Wake  by Russell Braddon, pictured. It didn’t have that vivid book jacket illustration, just a black and dusty cover with the title and author at the top of the spine. I had already read Russell Braddon’s  The Naked Island , a memoir about the author's trials in a Japanese POW camp, so I was keen to read more.   Nancy Wake, however, was somewhat different to my usual fare, causing my mother to raise a quizzical eyebrow when she asked to see what I had borrowed - a rite of passage indeed. Garston Library in Liverpool, near my then home from where I borrowed the book, was a place I frequently visited...

I went to see a play last month, written by a local Suffolk author, Suzanne Hawkes, with my friend, Virginia Betts, in the lead role. Pat and Ron – Writers in Crime was an exploration of the friendship between American crime writer Patricia Highsmith… “I write thrillers!” she interjects with an exasperated drawl. …and fellow author Ronald Blyth. He was Suffolk born and bred and they met when she stayed in the county. The play was brilliantly written and acted and I found out much about two authors who I confess I’ve not read. However, the most surprising thing I learned that evening had nothing to do with their literary works, or character creations. I discovered that Patricia Highsmith collected snails. Maybe not too much of an odd fact on its own, but her penchant for these slimy creatures went even further as she used to keep them in her handbag with a head of lettuce when she went out and was even known to stick them inside her bra! She did have more usual writerly hab...