L If they’re ever looking to recruit spies, forget handsome, fit, blue-eyed Bonds. Forget gym-buffed Daniel, impossibly good-looking Tom and danger magnet Matt. Look instead for a middle-aged woman in

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

Thanks for coming in today, Bea,” said Jason, the commissioning editor at Bluestone Press, where Bea was interviewing for yet another assistant job. “We’ll be in touch.” “Okay, great,” replied Bea, fo

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt was my recent holiday read, and I loved it. It tells the story of lonely widow Tova, whose teenage son vanished 30 years ago. She works at a small aquari

Life has a bad habit of mirroring art. Sometimes, this can be in a deeply sad way. A while after I wrote about the assumption of guilt in a traumatised young woman with poor social skills, I watched a

You have the universe in your hair and the stars on your brow. I would wrap you up in heaven’s rainbow cloak, But I am a poor man. My only currency is hope. You are like an orchard abundant with fruit