Five minutes after Megan drove away in Felix’s mother’s car, leaving her shattered friends behind in the pool house, she knew she’d made a dreadful mistake. On a blind bend, she stopped, oblivious to …
Words that wait in the wings
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Recommended Read: Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, in fact Magpie Lane could be my book of the year. Yes, I know it’s only the first of May, but this haunting tale of family life among the privileged …
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The Lesser Known City
Twenty years ago we moved to the outskirts of Oxford. It is the city of my son’s birth, of his schooling, at 13 he was confirmed by the city’s bishop. I will probably end my days here, because I’ve …
Cancel Halloween? Over my breathless corpse!
A neighbour knocked this morning; she was creating, she explained, a Halloween map, showing which houses will be putting on pumpkin displays this year. Seems a bit over-organised, I thought, we’ve …
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Babies, books & saying goodbye.
When my son was a baby, at exactly this time of year, I was pushing his pram along one of our village roads. Horse chestnuts had started to litter the pavements and random apple trees were tossing …
On writing, and swimming, and overcoming doubt
By rights, I should not like wild swimming. I’m not a particularly good swimmer, never taught, other than by my dad on Sunday mornings in the local leisure centre (Darwen Baths, for those who remember …
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The Craftsman is the Great North West Read
I’m delighted that, in a first promotion of its kind, The Craftsman has been chosen as the ‘Great North West Read’ this autumn, when twenty two library authorities will be working together to get the …
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What happens on a proof tour?
I was looking forward to finding out. I’ve done numerous book tours, reader events and signings, but rocking up in bookshops some weeks before a book is published was a new one on me. It starts …
Confession time
Confession time: I dread hearing my books read aloud. OK, the odd sentence or two, maybe even a whole paragraph, can sound pretty cool but sooner or later comes the repeated word, the clumsy phrase, …
A tough and painful decision
Towards the end of last year I made one of the toughest decisions of my life when I chose to leave a relationship of ten years standing. For a decade I’d been nurtured and cared for, given the …
