Category: General Blog

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

You know how it goes: which 8 gramophone (they don’t actually still use that wonderfully archaic word, I don’t think, but it used to be there) records would you take to your desert island?  And lately, there’s been a variation  on the theme of a well-known (ostensibly …) person being invited to name the 8 pieces...

One of my favourite writers is Anne Tyler. She is someone who seems to make writing look effortless and easy – which, of course, shows what a great writer she is. To write simply, accessibly, and yet still  convey depth of character and emotion and say all you want to say – well, it’s very,...

As every upstanding, respectable and notably patriarchal male of Victorian times knew, the popular image of the angel in the house was not just an image, but mandatory.  His wife had to aspire and fulfil the demands  of being passive, powerless, pious and pure.  At the same time, she was also expected to be charming,...