The Liberian civil war lasted fourteen years, between 1989 and 2003. It is a conflict I came to know well when, in 2006, I taught in a school on a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana. But while I was there I never discussed with Liberians their own memories of the war. It was not my […]
Archives for 2015
From Alconleigh to Versailles
Nancy Mitford’s Emergence as a Biographer. All citations and a bibliography have been omitted due to space constraints and can be requested from the author. Nancy Mitford found herself with a dilemma in 1952. She had just published The Blessing, after a string of best-selling novels. She had settled in Paris, where she had followed […]
The Reluctant Kingmaker
An edited extract from the first chapter of a biography of Vice-Admiral Sir John Lawson (1615-1665). Citations for documents quoted are available from the author. On 13th December 1659, with the army controlling Parliament and rioting on the streets of London, Vice-Admiral John Lawson led 22 warships into the Thames threatening to blockade the city […]
Forgotten Lives
It was not until Grandmother died that I discovered that she had a sister. Now Amy’s sapphires flash from my fingers as I type, a constant presence at the edge of my consciousness. I treat them carelessly – after making pastry I find fragments of dough lodged under the stones, dulling their blue glow. As […]
Sorting out
Elephants in zoos and circuses are visitors’ favourites, but they are not always kindly-treated. “You know they’re kind of square-ish triangles, don’t you? The jaw bones make the bottom angles and that big lump on the crown makes the top. And the sides and the front are flat.” “Yes,” I said, wondering why Steve was […]
White Coated Vultures
This is an extract from a novel-in-progress, provisionally entitled, Heartsick. Ellie isn’t supposed to die yet: she’s only twenty-two. But her car collided with a lamppost, the doctors have declared her brain-dead, and her parents have agreed to donate her organs – Ellie’s objections don’t come into the matter. Ellie finds herself tied to those […]
Blue Speedwell
It was all the giant, pulley-type things and strange machinery painted in thick yellows and blues that came first, riding high on the front of the ship, hijacking the best spot like it was more important than all us people paying to get to Fishguard; they looked kind of blobby and like those fancy Lego […]
Under the Tiger’s Eye
Excerpt from a novel-in-progress. By eleven Anita was drunk. She’d had three screwdrivers on an empty stomach and danced far too much. Her friends continued on the dancefloor as she returned to the table. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Avinash make a beeline towards her. ‘Hey,’ she said, sitting down on […]
When You Look Across the River
He sits there looking across the river, waiting for her to arrive. In the top pocket of the old army jacket he’s wearing are two joints that he’s just finished rolling. The sun belts down, slapping the back of his neck. She’s late – they were supposed to meet at half past four, but it’s […]
NOONE
Extract from an early draft of a novel set in Queensland, Australia, in 1877 My first real experience of the war against the blacks came at age thirteen, when me and my brother Billy were out hunting rabbits and strayed onto John Sullivan’s land. It was spring of seventy-seven and there’d been no rain for […]