Point of view is something that can plague writers, but, if it is well handled, readers should not be unduly conscious of it. Unless that’s rather the point. But more of that later. Of course if the novel is a first person narrative, everything is very simple. The story has to be told rigidly and entirely through the eyes of the fictional narrator. Think Jane Eyre. The reason we are utterly shocked – or at least we were the first time we read it or saw a film or tv adaptation – when Mr Mason objects with his this marriage...

For us Elizabethan babies, born in the early days of the Queen’s reign, she’s a figure whose life has shadowed our own. Always there in the background in some shape or form. Our mothers were about the same age as the Queen. Our fathers more or less parallel with Prince Philip. And as for their children – both young Prince Charles and younger Princess Anne made weekly appearances into our primary school classrooms in the form of stamps purchased for our savings books. Once a week – if my memory serves me accurately – and if we’d remembered to badger...

…or at least that is advice vaguely handed out to people who claim they want to write. And to a certain extent, it’s probably a good starting point. After all, if someone can’t write convincingly of their immediate surroundings and experiences, they are unlikely to be able to conjure imagined worlds and scenarios. But after a while it’s a very restrictive instruction and will lead more to diary or journal writing than anything more creative. Which leads me neatly on to my own immediate situation – one that in turn has had me search my reading memory for fictional accounts...

Spring! And the start of my New Year. January has never felt an appropriate time to mark the end of one year and the start of the next since it seems only the calendar displays any difference. Wake up on January 1st and the day is as short and probably as dark and dank as the day before. Whereas Spring! For anyone connected with the teaching profession, the knowledge that two terms are over and only one remains of the school year – and the only one in which the journey to and from home is taken entirely in the...

I am one of those rare creatures who loves poetry. Who actually sits down and reads it. Perhaps I’m wrong – and I hope I am – but I seldom if ever meet anyone who loves it the way I do. For whom poetry is, indeed, so often worth more than pictures, more than prose. For me, poetry is the most economically form of writing. (not that I can write it, sadly.) After all, there’s no need for a narrative if it’s lyrical verse. There’s no need for characters, structure, developmental progression or all that other stuff that prose writers...