THE LEGACY OF MR JARVIS is on the shelves of independent bookshop, BrOOK’S in Pinner – in fact, two copies are displayed!

Pinner is where I lived for the first few years of my life and where I started school at West Lodge Primary. I also spent many years at the Studio School in Marsh Road,  studying drama and ballet under inspiring teachers(and later taught there myself in the nursery  and in both the ballet and drama departments ) Consequently, it is a place that was hugely formative for me on every level.  All those endless hours spent at the library – the ‘new’ library to those of us who are old enough to remember its predecessor near the crossing and a bit of green by the River Pinn – and equally endless hours dawdling in Woolworth’s and the memorial park and the Old Oak Tea Rooms and the toy shop- Beaumont’s – in the High Street.  So it’s no wonder that the place has so far found its way into my first two novels.

Pinner features in  MR JARVIS (not by name, but locals will recognise references on page 7 to Bridge Street(now the home of BrOOK’s) and Marsh Road and older residents will remember the Langham Cinema) and it has an appearance actually by name  in my first novel, COUNTING THE WAYS, (check page 21)so it seems very pertinent that the inspiring independent shop is now selling it!  In fact, when I think of how fundamental Pinner was to me growing up, moving there with my parents and big sister when just a few months old and not entirely breaking connections with the place until I was 30, it only seems right to think of BrOOK’S, Pinner stocking my novel.  And, as a devoted and extremely fussy coffee drinker and a lover of wine, the fact that BrOOKS provides its customers with ‘a curious haven for book-lovers, wine-drinkers and coffee-sippers’ as their website says, in my opinion MR JARVIS couldn’t have found a better and more appropriate home!