The phrase in the title is not of my invention. It’s the first line of a poem by the 20th century Russian poet, Yevtushenko whose poetry I discovered round about the age of 16 and have continued to love the handful that I know since then. People – or rather characters as clearly they are creations and products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner as every published story is obliged to state – are the concern of novelists who have the task of inventing, developing and shaping characters who will convince. A reader, after all, needs...

Celebrities seem to be ubiquitous these days. So much so, that I haven’t even heard of most of the names that people mention or know the reason for their apparent celebrity status. And it’s not just the pop and sports worlds that produce them either. Social media, the era of influencers and reality tv are no doubt responsible for many who appear to have acquired the label and now feature regularly on the pages of certain celebrity-focused magazines. There, we are invited to view their splendid homes and marriages and life styles and envy at their conspicuous affluence and material...

Historic fiction is self-explanatory. Surely. It refers to novels about the ‘Old Days,’ as we used to call the past when I was a child. By which, of course, we meant the times when our grandparents were alive. When life was in black and white rather than colour. When people were ‘Old Fashioned.’ I think our childhood vision of their past was of lives lived in slow motion or, as L.P Hartley so famously says in the opening of The Go-Between: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. Yet when you think about it, everything that...

There has to be a psychological term for what authors suffer from. All those months that trail into years of writing a novel, re-writing, editing, altering, changing – and finally the finished article, the published bound edition is to hand. And, unpacking that first box of books, sifting the copies from their layers of protective wrapping paper, should be an ecstatic experience. But it’s not. Instead, it’s terrifying. The next anxiety-inducing moment is when people start to ask for copies. Say they can’t wait to read it. Inform you that our book group is choosing it for their next read....

And yes, it really is 40 years ago. For anyone of at least 55 or so, that’s quite a startling thought. For whilst it may not feel quite like yesterday, memories are surely so sharp and acute for the era of the 1980s. For it really was a turning point in so many ways. Which is one of the reasons I chose the year 1983 to set my fourth novel, The Odyssey of Lily Page. Some fascinating or facile facts – depending on your point of view – about 1983 for a start. A pound of Irish Cheddar Cheese cost...

And here it is again, our Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness. Our time of sodden paths and leaf-strewn parks and a determined putting away of the flip flops and sliders and a seeking out of boots that need heeling and a glove that has apparently lost its partner over the summer. And we embrace it. Living in the northern hemisphere seasons are so part of our DNA that personally, I would be bereft without them. That’s not to say I don’t moan and complain about the unreliability of so many of our English versions. For me, summers should be...

My fourth novel, The Odyssey of Lily Page, began life in 2020 immediately after I had finished Miller Street SW22, ahead of its publication in early 2021. Yes, I write slowly. The rest of living, getting, spending etc so often get in the way and even after the last sentence is finished, numerous re-writes, edits, proof reads and re-reading of proofs extends the whole process of producing a book. In May, the manuscript was, however, duly delivered to my publishers, to await the various stages of further preparation before an eventual publication date in late November 2023. So all was...

At what age are we when we start wondering, What if …? At which particular stage of life have we reached when we begin to consider, in a musing, abstruse kind of way, Supposing I had taken that job. Or supposing I’d accepted that invitation to that particular party Or supposing I’d not noticed that particular person looking at me in that particular way …. Doors that opened to us might not have opened, but remained closed and consequently our future lives could have been so very different. That broken relationship – supposing it had succeeded? That rash invitation –...