Q: Which writers do you admire most and why?

 

A: There are too many to name in the space provided! I have always experienced the world through literature and treasure the books of my youth, reading and rereading those that shaped me and that I have come to regard almost as friends. Their authors were masters of the art of leaving things unsaid, addressing the essential ambiguities of being human, and that too often our attempts to triumph over them – no matter how heroic – lead to defeat. My favourite writers, in no particular order are: Tolstoy and Henry James, Doris Lessing, Beryl Bainbridge and Thomas Mann; Rebecca West and Elizabeth Bowen, Somerset Maugham, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Yukio Mishima and Kazuo Ishiguro; Anton Chekov and his successor as master of the short story, Raymond Carver; Alain Fournier and the travel writing of Jan Morris; the poems of Charlotte Mew, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound and of course T.S. Eliot. I could go on.

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Q: Name three books that changed your life.

 

A: Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure because it helped me remain true to my convictions; Thomas Malory’s Le Mort D’Arthur because it drew me towards the sacred; and Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower because the author, with whom I corresponded, encouraged me to begin writing in earnest.

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Q: How do you write?

 

A: I compose both by hand and on the computer, on and off continuously throughout the day and often with quite a lot happening around me, ambient or spiritual music playing in the background.

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Q: What advice would you give a writer struggling with a difficult section of their book?

 

A: Essentially the same advice, attributed to Winston Churchill, when he said: “If you’re going through hell, keep going!” Speaking from experience, some of it bitter, I have learned that if you find yourself crossing out and rewriting the same bits over and over again, it might be time to change tack, drop the section or even the entire book. As with any craft, writing requires practice and with practice should come continual improvement. When that simply won’t happen, take it as a sign from the great beyond to move in another direction.

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Q: What comes next?

 

A: I am nearly finished with a second novel and doing research on a third, both of them historical. The first is set during the twentieth century Cold War and based on my family; the second in the nineteenth century, taking as its starting point the doomed love affair between the artist Edward Burne-Jones and his model and muse, the sculptress Maria Zambaco.

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