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No eden, small or large, would be complete without birds. Several species feature in Small Eden. First, we have the songbirds in the hedgerows and the pleasure gardens. There’s Hettie’s grey African parrot Fairfax (a personality in his own right). And then we have the green ring-necked parakeets Robert buys for his pleasure garden. I…
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My tenth novel is a personal one. With Small Eden, I have written yet more characters into my local landscape – the land on which our cottage is built. When we moved into the cottage, the vendors told us that it had been the gatehouse for an estate, and this was certainly the received wisdom,…
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I felt very strongly that the cover for Small Eden should have a strong local anchor. The inspiration for my tenth novel was the cottage I have called home for the past twenty-one years, built (as far as we’ve been able to ascertain) as the ticket office for pleasure gardens which opened at the turn…
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What if the person you thought you’d lost forever walked back into your life? That’s the question Katy Regan asks in her latest novel, How to Find Your Way Home. Once I discovered that the book involved birdwatching, a subject I wrote about in A Funeral for an Owl, I knew that I needed to…
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Imagine, if you will, discovering of a cache of photographs; the instinctive knowledge that what you are holding in your hands is rare and precious. You won’t be the first to experience this feeling, but that hardly matters. It will feel as though you are. Anthony Penrose grew up thinking that he had one famous…
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When I released I Stopped Time, it was to test the waters. And by ‘the waters’, I mean what was then the brave new world of self-publishing. I commissioned a cover design, choosing a photograph that was appropriate to the era and included the themes of time and photography. The result was in keeping with…
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I’m delighted to welcome JJ Marsh (Jill) to Virtual Book Club, my author interview series which gives authors the opportunity to pitch their books to your book club, be it virtual or real.  As an English teacher, actor, director and cultural trainer, Jill has lived and worked all over Europe. Now she’s a full-time author, publisher…
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Virtual Book Club has been socially distancing for a while but I’m delighted to be back with writer and broadcaster Christine Webber. We’ll be discussing her new novel, So Many Ways of Loving. Christine Webber tried various careers in her younger days – she was a classical singer, a Principal Boy in pantomimes, an undistinguished…
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I’m delighted to see that the BBC is using Call The Midwife’s five-million strong audience to highlight the scandal of Britain’s nuclear tests. The first episode of series 10 portrays Derek and Audrey Fleming, and newborn Christopher. At first, Christopher’s birth defects are thought to have been caused by thalidomide. After Derek reveals that he served…
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A happy dance I hate to wish new year away, but I know I’m not the only one who was glad to see the back of January. Fortunately, February kicked off with some very good news indeed. At the Stroke of Nine O’Clock had been selected for a coveted Historical Society Society Editor’s Choice flag,…
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