The Craft of Fiction

First published in 1921, by Jonathan Cape, Percy Lubbock’s “The Craft of Fiction” is a classic work on the novelist’s art. When I read it for the first time in the late 1960s it left an indelible impression on me. The book has a...

British and American English

For anyone who speaks British English – or a fairly close variant such as South African English – travelling to the United States can be a linguistically challenging experience. As a frequent visitor to the US (I have a daughter living there) my confusion...

Hatchards bookshop, Piccadilly

In the last few years before I retired my office was at 6 St. James’s Square, London. I had no time for leisure reading in those days, but temptation lay close at hand in the form of Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly. Sometimes I would take a brisk walk at...

Prose anthologies

There is a shelf in my study reserved for prose anthologies; I have had a soft spot for them ever since “A Book of Modern Prose”, compiled by Margaret Flower, was one of my school set books way back in the 1950s. (It was only later that the appropriateness...

The Centenary of World War I

When I was doing research for my 2007 novel Journeys to the End of the World one of my reference books was The South African Forces in France by John Buchan (Thomas Nelson and Sons 1920). Buchan was a man of many parts – army officer, Governor-General of Canada, and...