Authors Electric

'The Load of Unicorn' by Cynthia Harnett I've just finished re-reading 'The Load of Unicorn' by Cynthia Harnett. It's a great book, set at the time of Caxton and featuring a bidding battle between two publishers over the tales of Malory - so as well as being a good read, it's a book which will put a smile on the face of any writer. She effortlessly educates as well as entertains, and does some pretty fabulous illustrations as well, and I found myself thinking what a terrific dinner guest she'd make. Naturally, that led me to think of what other literary dinner guests I'd like to invite - along with all my fellow AE friends and colleagues of course who would automatically receive a gilt edged invitation. The list started to grow so long that I realised that no table was going to be big enough, and it would have to be more along the lines of a stand-up buffet, which would rather spoil the initial idea of fascinating conversation shared over ...

At the age of eight I was discovered curled up in a chair reading my Dad's battered old Penguin edition of The Iliad . I'd like to claim I was a child prodigy, but it really would be a blatant lie: when the book was gently prised out of my fingers and replaced with a version more accessible to my tender years, I found it much easier going. The Iliad was followed in quick succession with The Odyssey which I liked even better: I still have the copy, bought by my Mum, back in the days when hardbacks were Expensive. And that was followed by a collection of Greek and Roman myths, by Roger Lancelyn-Green - and I liked his Robin Hood much better than some of the others I also read. It was this with this discovery of multiple versions of Robin Hood that it slowly dawned on me that Not All Stories were Original. (See? Told you - definitely not a Child Prodigy.) Sometimes it was a re-telling of a story which someone else had written. Sometimes the writer did a brilliant job, a...

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and a damn good book to read ... Early yesterday morning TH White dropped in to share his overwhelming grief at the loss of his beloved dog Brownie: after pouring out his sorrow he lingered a little longer to help with a bit of research on dogs for a book I'm currently working on. With a bit of work done, I felt justified in taking a little time off to enjoy a picnic lunch with Ray Bradbury, who was joined halfway through by Isaac Asimov; regretfully I had to send them away far sooner than I would have wished in order to get back to work. In the evening my dinner guest was John Wyndham, who cared not at all that the grub was on a tray rather than the dining room table (which is too covered with reference materials at the moment for formal dining). He kept me up rather later than intended, but when I finally got to bed, I shared a mug of cocoa with Terry Pratchett before drifting off to sleep. Yes, you're never alone when you've got a ...

Does my bum look big on this? And do you really care? How much information do you really need - or want - about an author? When I was much younger, if I'd just finished a really good book, all I really wanted to know was whether the author had written any more, so a list of titles was all I wanted. Sometimes though, reluctant to put the book down, I'd read the bit of bumph about the author found at the front of the book in paperbacks, and on the dustjacket if it was a hardback still in possession of one. Occasionally it offered tantalising little snippets of information: my Narnia books informed me that the young Clive had lived in Belfast (where I was living at the time, instantly making me feel there was a special bond between us) and had decided to write the sort of books which he would have liked to read when he was young. I learned that Gillian Baxter, who wrote some brilliant pony stories, had written - and got published - her first novel when she was fifteen; there'...