Following his track - Dennis Hamley
I n my last blog, I suggested that it was time I stopped faffing around and got on with some proper writing. So I’ve done just that and have now passed (I hope) the point of no return with The Second Man From Porlock , my latest attempt to get the old, failed novel about Samuel Taylor Coleridge right at last and out of my system. STC. The man himself Trying to write novels centred round real people presents many difficulties. They aren’t biographies: conversely, they ca n’t be pure fiction. It takes a braver writer than I am to dare even to think of writing a book like Milton in America , Peter Ackroyd’s wonderful ‘What if?’ novel, which turns what might well have been Milton’s fate into something which actually happens. This makes for a stunning piece of literary and historical understanding, not ...