There are simply too many books to read;  too many I have always meant to read and am ashamed that I haven’t (Vanity Fair heads that list and all of Trollope …) let alone the number appearing weekly that are there on my mental list to catch up with one day. Yet for the past few weeks, I have been re-reading much loved novels instead of embarking on a new writer, a new title.  I’ve been looking at my book shelves and taking down copies and searching for a particular favourite phrase or section where the writing is particularly extraordinary...

Is it ‘a wonderful story of true love’ as the poster suggests?  Not my choice of wording, but the phrase suggested by the marketing people  who designed it, making use of a review comment, and I suppose they should know what attracts …but so many people look at that and ask me, ‘so do you write romance?’ And, of course, I don’t.  But it’s back to the category problem of people seemingly wanting a definition  – although reading the blurb on the back of the novel or the first page or two would surely clarify this.  Yes, I write about...

My next novel, THE LEGACY OF MR JARVIS, is now with my publisher and has an official publication date of 28th January 2020.  Copies will, in fact, be available about 2 months before this once they have left the printers and the novel could prove an ideal Christmas present for that troublesome and hard to please relative! So what is the novel about? People always ask, “what sort of books do you write?”  And what they want is a clearly defined genre: crime, fantasy, gothic, historic …and my writing falls into none of these.  THE LEGACY OF MR JARVIS concerns...

…except when I am at our house in Crete! And then, suddenly, the days seem to offer spare hours when simply reading begins to feel like a pleasurable obligation.  So what did I read during my recent visit? John Boyne’s latest novel, LADDER TO THE SKY. I’ve loved all his novels and this was compelling with fascinating characters – there was just one aspect of the story that I felt was disappointing(a middle section)but perhaps that was just me – I didn’t see any negative comments on the usual sites  His writing is so good. Adam Kay’s THIS IS GOING...

At the beginning of April, I spent five days attempting to learn Greek. Or rather, I spent a week trying to begin to be ready to start learning Greek. I think, truly, that was my goal:  to break down the sense of total panic and sheer, inhibiting frustration that rose up every time I tried even to remember a phrase.  Or a letter. Or how to say ‘yes’ without saying ‘no.’  (to non-Greek speakers, this is not nearly as easy and idiotic as it sounds …) I arrived in the third floor classroom of the City Lit Institute, a lovely...

Of course, everyone says there’s no need.  Why bother?  people say.  Surely everyone in Crete speaks English.  And yes, most people have either an impressive, very fluent command of English or can at least get by.  Only the very elderly have little or no grasp.  Walk into any shop in any small town, city or village and, once the assistants grasp that Greek is not exactly one’s mother tongue, they switch swiftly, graciously and mostly effortlessly into English. And it makes me feel very ashamed that, after 20 years of going to Crete – with 8 of those years spent...

I am currently re-reading Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett.  I first read this when I was a student studying  for an English Literature degree and Bennett was required reading and the starting point for our Modern Fiction course – we didn’t call them modules in those days!  I loved his writing then and read everything he wrote with The Old Wives’  Tale probably my favourite.  I recently found a copy of this in our local Oxfam bookshop and will move on to it next. Riceyman Steps is set in Clerkenwell in London, an area I first got to know well in...