Authors Electric

I can't quite fix in my mind the moment I decided that enough was enough and I would leave the world of conventional publishing for ever. It's a bad sign of a senior condition when you can't identify even the year it happened. But I think it was in 2009, even before I had to accept that Walker weren't going to do the third in the Ellen's People trilogy, an event which almost made me lose heart about writing completely. But not quite. There was still a possibility of a new beginning, an enticing prospect with a new publisher who had already reissued The War and Freddie , a book for which I have a huge affection. I'd just finished a novella for the YA market. It was about something I'd never really considered writing about before. That was because it was something I'd not experienced directly. I'd only watched and enviously read about it. Sailing. With Julia and Jan around on this blog, I hardly dare mention the word. Besides which, I still have ech...

When I wrote my novel 'My Mate Shofiq' all those years ago, the race relations problem seemed not too difficult to understand. We had invited many people into Britain from our former colonies, because we needed the labour. When I was a young reporter, the Minister of Health came to the Royal Portsmouth hospital to explain why he was recruiting nurses from the West Indies. The young hopefuls were predominantly black, and he addressed them thus: "You are all wonderful. You are caring, hard-working people. Tell all your friends back home in the Caribbean that we want them here, we need them here. Our welcome will be unequivocal." Loud applause, from everybody in the room, black and white. This is not a quiz, so I won't ask you to guess his name. It was Enoch Powell. The headline on my story read something like "Health Minister urges West Indians: 'come and save the NHS.'" In they came, of course – why wouldn't they? – and duly sa...