Phew! That’s the Book Festival over for another year. And I confess I’ll be quite glad to stop this gallivanting into town for performances and parties at all hours. But I’ve had some interesting experiences, and learned a thing or two about how to seduce an audience. (I come to these events with two agendas: [...]
It’s a curious thing. With all the rumours about the decline of book publishing, easy access to e-books, the increase in DVDs, book festivals are still enormously popular. This is the second week of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and Charlotte Square, with its landmark marquees and wooden walkways, is positively seething with visitors paying [...]
With my own book about Alzheimer’s safely published, and my mind more to grips with the fact that I’m now living with dementia in my private life, I’ve had space to go back to reading about the subject. Facts this time, more than the fiction I’ve warbled on about before. And it’s rainbow time. But [...]
I’m always on the alert for authors and books with something to tell me for my own writing, so when I saw a session at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this week with two authors discussing my sort of themes, I thought: Ahhah, double whammy; this one’s definitely for me. The two books were Samantha [...]
Garrets have long had a romantic appeal for me, conjuring up images of impecunious geniuses scribbling furiously, driven by their talent to endure hardship and isolation for the sake of their art – floor littered with discarded paper, fingers blotched with ink, hair dishevelled, meals and sleep forgotten … Then there’s the whole business of [...]
It’s not every day that I receive an envelope bearing the House of Lords crest. So perhaps I can be forgiven for tearing it open casually without noticing – and ruining the envelope in the process! But anyway it was the contents that prompt me to tell you about the experience, not the crest. A [...]