PUBLISHERS OF LITERARY FICTION SINCE 1983
I was barely fourteen when I was packed off to France for the first time. I said goodbye to my parents in Dover, heaved my suitcase on to the ferry, and steeled myself for the journey ahead, rehearsing my rudimentary French phrases in my head in readiness for the two week stay with a family […]
June 2013, Athens I’m making a film about Codename Xenophon, to give the flavour of the story, characters and setting. I make a list of possible scenes. Then I walk around the streets, recording what I see on a small camera: the changing guards at the Parliament, hurrying shoppers on Athinas Street, buses, cars, motorbikes, […]
Like old treasure maps (“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”) there is something fascinating about dead men’s manuscripts, whether they turn up in attics, junk shops or the safekeeping of friends. I thought this a while ago when such a manuscript came into my hands, written by man named Tom Cullen about a man named […]
Le texte s’écrit” is a useful phrase that survives the nonsense of much “literary theory”. I know that this is just the passive form, but for me the text really does write itself. Not all the time, of course, but for the production of anything original, the writer has merely to be prepared, by long […]
At the close of Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” Holocaust survivors bring small stones to their employer/savior’s grave, in his memory. In my opinion any writer who sets novels in a war should do the same. Thus A Dark Song of Blood, set in 1943-44 German-occupied Rome, although a fictional work, means to remember those who lived […]
A few days ago I chanced on a book that has been lurking on my shelves for about 40 years. Appropriately enough for this year in which the government seems determined to ‘celebrate’ the outbreak of the First World War, it is a delightful anti-German satire published in 1915. Malice in Kulturland is based on […]
It’s funny, the labels that get stuck to you. During the last ten years or so I’ve often found myself billed as a science-fiction novelist; I’ve no idea if I really count as one, but if that’s what people want to call me then fine. Apparently I’m also an historical novelist: in the 90s I […]