How fortunate I was to meet a group of women on a further education writing course, prior to my MA. We decided that our assessment of each others’ work was more valid and valuable than that of the tutor in the overcrowded evening sessions. The Monday Group we became; Henrietta Branford, a brilliant children’s writer, […]

Ordering review copies of ‘The Angel Child’ – always the excitement of seeing what is my invention, from my imagination, in book form. And yet I no longer own the characters; they are real and have been for a long time. The truth is that unless they become people in their own right early in […]

Bird’s foot trefoil, sweet cicely, shepherd’s-purse and vetch. Cow parsley or Queen Ann’s lace, hemlock, the poisonous witchy plant, wild carrot, angelica, all of umbrella form. Buttercup, forget-me-not, bitter cress, hogweed, groundsel and clover. All the flowers that haunt my memory of childhood walks. They sing the song of our countryside, native or home grown.

The last two months spent marking English exam papers from around the world precludes any other creative thought processes. At times it’s inspiring to hear the young voices, idealistic, wanting a better place to live. Not just for themselves but for everyone. They speak of a world without borders and enemies, that technology must improve […]

Can I describe the condition of love as of ‘barnacles attaching to a ship’s bottom’? This is not the grand falling of one enchanted evening with her or him across a crowded room. No, it’s that gradual accumulative effect of liking aspects of a person, the familiarity of friendship which can eventually lead to full […]