Quite a lot, it seems. In a name, that is. Juliet might have thought, in the throes of youthful passionate love at first sight, that it didn’t matter what Romeo’s name was, but readers of novels often respond differently. And writers too, of course. In the recent live Facebook interview I did with Hillingdon libraries, I was asked by a member of the online audience how I choose the names of my characters – a great question that actually took some thought to answer. After all, names are so important. We all hold connotations and associations with names. Names suggest...

In Crete, despite the face masks and near deserted streets and beaches, it was possible to shut out a certain awareness of our current situation. The absence of constant media intrusion determined to present a negative and pessimistic view was thankfully absent. After all, there were no glaring headlines on the White Mountains visible from our balcony. No fear-spreading in the clear early morning light or in the glorious mid evening sunsets. It was easy to think that other horizons existed, that the word ‘virus’ was not the only one of importance in everyone’s vocabulary. Yet back in England with...

It’s very early dawn, barely the first sign of light, when the noises start – Cock-A-Doodle-Doos from a few roosters anxious to get on with the business of their day.  But they are easy to ignore and I am quickly back to sleep. Then it’s the first goat bells ringing – a less intrusive sound and one that manages to blend in with a lazy wish to resist waking. But the cicadas are less easy to ignore – if only for the reason that they are proof of a later hour and certainly a reminder that it is definitely time...

Going to Chesham to record Chiltern Voice with Antonia Honeywell brought back many memories – because Chesham was where I began my teaching career. My first job was at Chesham High School in 1978 – an utterly exhausting, draining year as all initial – or probationary, as we used to call them – years are for teachers. But I survived. Just. Returning to  Chesham to talk about my second novel on local radio was a very pleasant exchange for those early days in the classroom! Here is a second extract. Click to listen: [podcast id=2039] With thanks to Antonia Honeywell...

Last November, in that curious prelapsarian world where face masks had connotations of criminality and the failure to shake hands or embrace on greeting was considered impolite, I went to Chesham to be interviewed live on Chiltern Voice Radio  by writer and broadcaster, Antonia Honeywell. THE LEGACY OF MR JARVIS had just been published and in between hearing my choice of music played (very Desert Island Discs format!) we discussed my second novel as well as the writing process in general. As a change from my normal blog, here is an audio extract from that broadcast – with another couple...

It was at the wonderful bookshop in London’s  Lambs’ Conduit Street – PERSEPHONE BOOKS – where I found Noel Streatfeild’s  novel SAPLINGS and discovered that the writer we no doubt associate with childhood reading also wrote for adults. In fact, she wrote 16 novels for adults and spent her writing career publishing books for both adults and children. And after reading SAPLINGS I am so relieved that I can return to Noel Streatfeild and seek out all her other adult novels to complement, as it were, my childhood obsession with Ballet Shoes, White Boots, The Bell Family, The Painted Garden et al. SAPLINGS was published at...

I am obsessed with weather. Both in reality and in fiction – and, in truth, in my writing. I think there must be something of the 19th century habit of pathetic fallacy in me for I find it hard to write a scene or event without linking the weather to its mood and outcome. In the novel I have just finished Miller Street SW22 which is currently undergoing its final – I hope – revisions and an endless number of redrafts and re-edits – I have  woven weather into the structure by dividing the story into Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer so that...

On Fathers’ day considering  how fathers are represented in some of our most well-known classic novels is  irresistible. And the interesting thing is that so many are entirely absent. The orphan seems to be such a prevalent figure, after all, in 19th century literature. Jane Eyre’s father? Long gone, along with her mother, leaving her in the most untender hands of her aunt Reed and later the strictures of Lowood school and the dastardly Mr. Brocklehurst. Is Mr Rochester some sort of replacement Byronic hero/substitute father for her in the absence of her own? Dorothea and Celia in Middlemarch –...

This really is cheating the Desert Island Discs system. Not only have I swapped music for books, now I am insisting on 8 non-fiction as well as 8 novels. Last week’s selection came so easily to mind, whereas this week’s has taken a little more consideration … It is often said that men tend to read non-fiction more than novels. And that women tend to be the fiction addicts and set the factual stuff to one side. I am sure this is an inappropriate and unsubstantiated generalisation, but I have to admit to reading far less non-fiction, possibly because I...