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On Page 382 of Colm Toibin’s The Magician, a biographical novel which takes as its subject the life of one of the twentieth century’s most revered writers, the German Thomas Mann, he has Mann say [...]

The curtains are drawn around the corner bed diagonally opposite me in our ward, and have been for some time. Now a plaintive cry arises from the occupant, an elderly gent with a military bearing [...]

She’s loud, she could very well have had a drink or two too many – and there seems to be nothing the matter with her. Which is puzzling, since we’re both in A&E at Bedford Hospital, [...]

The patient in the bed nearest the bathroom is, of course, old. He’s also confused. “Where,” he asks in a north country accent, “am I?” The nurse at his bedside, sorting out his medication in a [...]

My stream of Monday ruminations was rudely interrupted a couple of months ago by illness – and an unexpected visit to the Elizabeth Ward of Bedford Hospital. Over the next eleven days all I had [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

Let’s think about a series of very tiny – but, some say, enormously significant – decisions that every writer has to take when beginning a story, and that is, what names should they give their [...]

Stories are universal, and some are told over and over again, in different ways, with diverse characters and in vastly differing times and places. Never be afraid of approaching a story of love, [...]