What revealed the magic of books for me was The Wind in the Willows. When I was five, I contracted measles, which meant I had to spend my days in bed in a darkened room. My mother sat outside my bedro

IT was two days until Christmas and the afternoon sky was blue and crisp as Lydia’s car pulled up in front of the magnificent Bristol Hotel. Why was it called the Bristol? she wondered. It was nowhere

An old man lives at the bottom of my garden. His name is Robert Barkus, or Bakehouse, or Bagust. Nobody is quite sure. But I often sense him around when I’m gardening, and I’ve found out a fair bit ab

Miss Julia White, horsewoman, sailor, farmer and haunter of my own farming life (such as it isn’t) first appeared in my life when I was 17, trying to get myself to agricultural college. Or was it when

Oh, the joy of curling up on a winter’s afternoon to immerse oneself in a compelling crime novel or TV drama featuring victims and sleuths. The story will be set in a picturesque, seemingly safe place

It was a hot day in one of the hottest and most uncomfortable summers of recent years. I was standing in a small upstairs bedroom of a house on the outskirts of a modern estate in the borough of South