The gifted biographer Miranda Seymour wrote Life on the Edge, her biography of Robert Graves, with the full co-operation of Graves’ family and with exclusive access to previously unseen papers. In the midst of this research she also found what would prove the inspiration for her brilliant novel The Telling, based on real events in 1939 when […]

‘I met the sad menopausee and offered her, at the flick of a switch, a return of beauty, youth, and desire. And – after all, I’m no stinge-merchant – power and money as well. Why not? If a man, such as Dr Faustus, was offered such commodities by myself … why not a woman, in […]

I am hungry for your presence. I hanker for the great blaze of your glance which when you turn it on me, will burn out the husk of my body and draw my soul to you…’ Julia O’Faolain’s second novel, first published in 1973, offers a rich, vivid portrait of the political and religious turmoil […]

The various remembrances for Nina Bawden, who died at the end of last month, make fine and instructive reading both for those who have loved her writing and those yet to make the discovery, who will be very much edified, I expect, to learn what a splendid woman she was. The Independent’s Boyd Tonkin praises Bawden’s ‘unfussy excellence’ […]

I go in my bedroom and lie on my bed and soon as I set eyes on Nick it’s like magic …’ (Alison) ‘There was a programme on TV about what would happen if there was a nuclear war. And I think if a nuclear war did happen I’d be thinking: Is Boy George safe?’ […]

For the purpose of his marvellous crime fiction Colin Watson invented a town called Flaxborough, located somewhere in the east of England, superficially bland and conservative, but concealing devious depths – there to be uncovered by the diligent local Detective Inspector Walter Purbright. Critic H.R.F. Keating argued that Watson’s Flaxborough merited comparison with ‘the creation […]

Meira Chand is of Indian-Swiss parentage, was born and educated in London, lived for many years in Japan with her Indian husband, and now resides in Singapore. Her multi-cultural heritage, married to her remarkable literary gift for storytelling drawn from history, help to explain why she has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as the ‘master of the […]

‘After I had run away from school, no one knew what to do with me …’ Born in Shanghai in 1915, son of a wealthy rubber merchant, Denton Welch was dispatched to an English boarding school after his mother’s death. There he suffered, and soon absconded, forcing his father to bring him back to Shanghai […]