I should have known when I cried at the end of How To Look Good Naked (remember the moment when the mother blew kisses to her daughter as she walked down the catwalk?) that I was coming down with something. Sore throat. Check. Streaming nose. Check. Only able to smell the inside of your own…
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To get in the right mindset for the novel I am working on, I have been listening to a lot of 80s music and have rediscovered an old favourite, Just One Kiss by the Cure. As it features the line, Remember the day when the trees fell down, you might be forgiven for thinking that…
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Last night Matt and I attended the ‘preview’ of People and Places, an exhibition taking place at our local art gallery, Mine (at which I have a display until 7th August). I felt very privileged to be one of the first to see a new limited edition book by the Spanish artist, Helena Sainz Moreno (also a poet)….
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Yesterday was a significant anniversary, 25 years to be precise, and yet I was still not prepared for the sight of a plain white headstone with a name, a date, and the words: For those who have loved him in life, Let us not forget him in death. It seems to me that missing persons…
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My mother’s choice of birthday treat was an afternoon outing to the Musical Museum at Brentford (www.musicalmuseum.co.uk) to see two films starring (and when I say ‘starring’, I should really say written, directed and produced by andstarring), Buster Keaton, accompanied by a 1929 Wurlitzer which was manufactured for a private home in the USA and then spent 30…
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Last night I made a new discovery. I’ve never pretended to understand Led Zeppelin. I wrote about their difficult rhythms in Half-Truths and White Lies and how, when Peter’s breakthrough comes, it is as if he has understood a difficult mathematical equation. Well, 37 years too late, I think I have finally got it. Just as…
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Yet again, I find myself quoting from other people’s material, but I like to share the things that inspire me. This time Stephen Fry has come to the rescue. Interviewed for the Radio Times by a 14-year-old boy called Eden, he was asked if there were any ambitions he had left. He quoted Oscar Wilde who…
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I’m flummoxed. As part of a deliberate decision to be more adventurous with my reading matter, I picked up a copy of Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney on a recent visit to Waterstone’s, Piccadilly. The cover spoke to me from the bookshelves (it’s a clever mock-up of a gold embossed leather bound book), the blurb was…
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Ruth Wilson is a commanding presence. Still fresh from drama school, she was selected by Stephen Poliakoff to play both – very different – female parts in Capturing Mary. She was both unnerving and magnificent as Alice Morgan in BBC1’s Luther. I had the privilege of seeing her on stage yesterday afternoon playing the part…
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In this year of anniversaries, one that shouldn’t escape attention is the 50-year anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, a story of small-town life in the South that captured worldwide imagination, selling half a million copies in its first year and winning the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Its enormous success, both critically and commercially, drove its…
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