Oh, you want to hear about fairy-tale retellings? You want to know the secret of why I write them? Is that it? Fine. Come a little closer. These aren’t some enchanted beans I’m selling, this is the re

Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

We have wandered many months through this land of Building Blocks. It is time for a break. Learning is a weary trek. And writing is not all about learning. Writing is about, well, writing. The doing o

Shadows Ulrik Skotte The Umbrella Murder The ...

The imagined gardens within the pages of our favourite books can seem as real as the flower beds outside our door. Here, author Sandra Lawrence explores three evocative literary landscapes

Ian McEwan is strolling through the garden of his Cotswolds manor house. Bees waft drowsily between wildflowers. Plump apples, pears and walnuts bauble the trees. Vibrant cerulean-blue damselflies hov