Authors Electric

These are a few of my Favourite Things Two weeks ago, I did one of my favourite things as a writer: visited a school. On the hottest and longest day of the year, I stood in a cool (aahhh, relief) assembly hall and spoke to two lots of 9 - 12 year-old boys, around 150 in all. Together we covered important topics that would be part of any national curriculum I had a hand in - alchemy, magical instruments, demons, Faustian pacts, corruption and abuse of power. Yup, that should equip them for dealing with whatever the world can throw at them in later life. Oh, and the crucial ingredients for what makes a good story: strong, believable characters, powerful motivation and a tight plot structure. I involved my audience as much as possible, asking questions ranging from easy to more demanding, not because I expected them to know all the answers but because it's extraordinary how often children can surprise themselves - and their teachers - with knowledge they didn't know th...

My Grandad was the kind of slow-moving, thoughtful countryman who never said three words when one would do. The family had been tenant farmers, but had, at some point, set themselves up as builders and plasterers. In the years leading up to WW2 there was no demand for house-building but there was for charcoal, so Grandad, his brother ‘Tub’ and son Pat took up charcoal making in the woods around Crowborough, high on the Sussex Weald.   Iron smelting using charcoal goes back beyond Roman times and you can still find traces of ancient bloomery furnaces here and there on the Weald.  Charcoal making is a long, slow process in the quiet of the woods; a lot of watching and waiting is involved and there’s not much need for talk. It must have suited Grandad. First, two roughly circular hearths had to be cleared of scrub, leaf-litter and small trees, and then levelled. The petts would be built on them. The siting was crucial. It helped if they were reasonably close to a sou...