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War talk is much in the air these days. We talk of “the war” in the way that our parents and grandparents must have referred, in their day, to “the war”. We’ve learned or relearned the vocabulary [...]

St Neots, a small town straddling the River Great Ouse a few locks down from Bedford, holds a market every Thursday in the town square. It was the site, in July 1648, of a pitched battle between [...]

I was paging idly through an old notebook this morning and came across a passage in my handwriting that will serve as the hinge of today’s piece. Yes, I frequently write in longhand – especially [...]

I found myself embroiled in a conversation the other day about that most intractable of writers’ problems: getting published. It’s a fraught subject. Behind the question of publication, though, [...]

I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between readers and writers; and by the implicit contract entered into between a reader and the book – and hence the writer of that book – when he [...]

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, [...]

If I were to give you a writing exercise challenging you to describe yourself, how would you go about it? What sort of information would you give? Well, of course I have no idea whatsoever what [...]

The dough of a particular variety of wholewheat bread is almost liquid. It slips between your fingers, it makes unexpected lunges for the edge of your working surface, it resists any attempt to [...]

Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya stands on the brink of an athletic breakthrough that many thought could never be achieved. In the Berlin marathon in September, he set a new world record of two hours, one [...]

In the beginning, the prospect of the life stretched out before you is without blemish.  Anything seems possible. You could write a great book, compose a perfect poem, paint a memorable picture. [...]

I want to talk about names. Names we give our characters, names we give our houses and – our narrowboats. And what they can communicate about the meaning stitched through our stories. We’ve just [...]