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Readers Club
If you enjoy my books, there’s every chance you may enjoy the books I enjoy reading, and that I may enjoy the books you read. So here’s where we can share our favourites and explain what makes them special.
Readers Club
If you enjoy my books, there’s every chance you may enjoy the books I enjoy reading, and that I may enjoy the books you read. So here’s where we can share our favourites and explain what makes them special.
A great autobiography – Seven Pillars of Wisdom
My next favourite book is Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E Lawrence. My father fought in WWII, firstly in the Western Desert. His officers had told him that it was the greatest book written about desert warfare. One day I must get around to recording my father’s...
Creative Writing – The Seven Basic Plots
I’m going to go non fiction next, with The Seven Basic Plots: why we tell stories, by Christopher Booker. I had just begun the Open University’s creative writing course. My first assignment had been a short story which remains one of my wife’s favourites. However my...
You Never Can Tell
No, not the Chuck Berry song, the play by George Bernard Shaw. Claire and I went to see it years ago. It was probably at the Theatre Royal in Bath, but could have been London. Edward Fox was playing the waiter, William. He was brilliant, of course. What Shaw does with...
What connects Alexander Dumas, Bob Geldof, and Rock Hudson?
I connect them. In late 1986 I spent three months managing the refurbishment of the cooling tower on the Port Sudan Oil Refinery. I had a team of five Irishmen, two Scotsmen, and dozens of Sudanese and Nigerians. Surrounding the refinery millions of people were...
Inspiration for Writing Style
The inspiration for my style of historical fiction writing comes from my reading. I read several Dennis Wheatley books as a teenager. Wheatley is probably best known for his occult novels like The Devil Rides Out. However the ones that most influenced me are The...