Bernard Shaw once observed that a biography tells more about the biographer than the subject. While there is some truth to this, the poor Fabian playwright-essayist-critic-troublemaker was obviously still recovering from the shock of reading Frank Harris’s autobiography written under …
Read more

Automata, clockwork and ancient mechanical devices have an allure for us that melds delight and intellect. In Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway gives us all three, with a cracking story for good measure. Which, without giving too much away, runs thus: the …
Read more

Scholastic’s Parent & Child 100 Greatest Books for Kids, like any ‘best of’ list, is notable as much for what it omits as for what it includes. I found myself scornful of some of the inclusions, and indignant at some …
Read more

A reviewer once wrote of my novel, Brimstone, that it was ‘an original story written with gusto’. Well, that reviewer should get out more for he or she has clearly failed to read a novel that really was written with …
Read more

  Here we are, then. Whether you have stumbled across this site by accident or whether you sought it out for some reason, I’m glad you’re here. As this is a blog, it’s naturally about me writing things and you …
Read more

Did we ever know him, dear reader? The Will of Rosalind and Kate, Puck, Hal, Macbeth and Beatrice? And not knowing Will, are these people who came mewling, laughing, raging or loving to the stage also strangers to us? Do …
Read more