Lulu Allison's Blog, page 3

Ten Weeks and Three Score Years – the future is coming

It is ten weeks until my second novel Salt Lick is published. As we move towards that future date, I wanted to look at the path the story of Salt Lick takes into its own imagined future. 

It is set some years from now in a world that is in many ways easily recognisable. The sea eats the edges of the land. The weather can be cruel. People live in families, go to work, do their best and their worst. 

I’ve always described the book as being not dystopian but further down the wrong road. Interestingly when Rónán Hession was kind enough to read it, he described it as being ‘a capsule of England’s dystopian present’ which I think in a way is the same thing. It has never seemed likely to me that suddenly, everything will become horrendously bad for everyone. But at all points in our history, things have been horrendously bad for some. 

I wrote the first draft in 2016, in the context of Brexit and a frightening rise in populism. I imagined that an authoritarian, right wing government would use my then imaginary pandemic (more devastating but more vague than the one we have since experienced) to tighten controls on the people; this looks very much a part of our dystopian present when you consider among other things, the draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021. The internet would be controlled and the government, both authoritarian and libertarian would read the mood and govern with the main purpose of retaining power.

Another key idea in the book, in a country with a smaller, more tightly controlled population is a countryside that is once again wild. I imagined that post-Brexit labour shortages would lead to more and more food importation. This in turn would make the rural economy first weak and eventually non-existent. People would move to the cities. The countryside would become wild again. 

I had a lot of fun imagining the consequences of such a shift; empty department stores in small towns, mediaeval churches languishing in a nest of reeds, hardy self-sufficient groups living off-grid and reclaiming the land. And of course, feral cows, the chorus of the book, commenting with love and exasperation on events. 

From the cow chorus

However, some of my conclusions are not what you could call fun. White nationalism has always been darkly present but seemed to grow from the shadows with Trump and Brexit/Johnson, just at the point when I started writing. I thought in this not so distant future, some people would take the opportunity to indulge these sad, exclusionary fantasies and would drift into empty places to live out their fears. So in Salt Lick, there are White Towns. They are small and spread out, in many ways risible but also “a danger, a pathogen, stored in pockets of the land like a contagious rash”. It seemed possible that we could walk into a future where this happens. And during a time when political fortunes are being shored up on the back of a culture war that recklessly stokes the fearfulness and frailty of those people used to presuming their own white superiority, it only seems more so. 

But bleak though these two themes are, I still maintain that it is no dystopia. There are people who determinedly maintain a connection to the land, there are idealists and political activists. There are people learning to make rope and build mills. There are city gardeners growing fresh food for their communities. There is love. There is in effect, down this future road, the same muddling-along mixture that there has always been.

It struck me the other day that as a child, I remember being told that in ancient Greece, it was common for men to have male lovers, that being gay was entirely unremarkable. And I think to all of us at that time, this in itself seemed a remarkable thing. And yet, with all due caveats to the trans- and homophobia that still most definitely exists and still most definitely negatively impacts people’s lives, now, a same sex partner is very far from extraordinary. I don’t make any claims for our having eradicated the bigotries, dismissals  and hatreds that mar the lives of so many. Only that times do and can change, and sometimes in our muddling along there are victories as well as defeats. 

Though I wrote some of Salt Lick in anger at what I see happening already, it was important to me to include the idea of hope. Not because we are in a battle between hope and disaster and each of us has to choose which we think will win, but because we are humans, and to live with a measure of both I suspect will always be our lot. 

If you would like to stay informed about the publication of Salt Lick please sign up for my occasional news letter here

Oh England, my lionhearts*

I dreaded today. I dreaded a familiar feeling of disappointment and let-down, the longing for a new season to start so that with luck some of the grime of failure could be wiped away by a good season for my team. I dreaded a day trying to avoid belligerence and bitterness about what should clearly have been a red card (#Chiellini) and regrets at what the story could’ve been. A day of trying to stop myself from blaming things, an unavoidable time of feeling tainted by failure.

Turns out I don’t feel any of that. The ending of this tournament has felt different to all the others. 

The loss hurts. But the tournament leading ups to it was up-lifting, this team were inspiring, the way they played, most of the time (#Scotland) was a joy. Taking the knee was more than all of that – it challenged and changed the narrative in this country. It created a hopeful light in the centre of the sour fog of nationalism, Brexitism, exceptionalism and fear. Though professional athletes will naturally demand only the very best from themselves, ‘real’ football fans don’t have to be only inspired by total victory. 

The way they supported each other on the pitch in victory and defeat is a model for all. Taking the knee is the model of how to support everyone outside the team too – and, if you resent that support, doubtless because you feel you don’t need it, in a way you are the one who needs it the most. The racists targeting the players are predictable and as disgusting as ever, and if I weren’t white perhaps I wouldn’t be able to feel what I do, which is hope that they are the losers. They are the losers. 

This team are exceptional to me. They brought decency home and that is a wonderful achievement. I don’t doubt that elements of our press will drag the gutters until they find a way to besmirch such sentiments but I am a believer, and a hopeful one. 

I am proud of this England team. I am uplifted by them. 

COME ON ENGLAND!

*Not that I expect the readership, but I thought that quoting Kate Bush would give the anti-wokists an extra dollop of spice for getting a real sour churn going in their bellies about how women don’t know anything about football. Take it away, lads, have a slow dance on me.

Haturdays – final hat

I have been quiet on the Haturday front as I have been busy editing my book Salt Lick (I’m pleased to say it is now ready for publication on 16th September.) But I still have one more hat to make. It is to honour and remember the women killed in the time of lockdown and the year of the Haturday fundraiser for RISE.

Now it really is time to get on with it so that I can hand over the fantastic £3300+ (so far!) to RISE – sadly I am sure they need it. And I also know that they will be grateful for any amount, so please do chip in if you are able. 

All the treasures I have been sent for the final hat.

Lots of people have been contributing small items for this final hat that they have either made or chosen as I wanted it to be collaborative. So much of the problem with domestic violence is the silence (signalling a kind of societal complicity) around it. We seem to have reached a consensus that as a society we can live with 2+ women a week being killed by current or former partners. That just isn’t right. That is why I wanted to support RISE, a charity that helps people escape domestic violence.

So, if you would like to contribute to this last hat, you can do so by contacting me and sending me something. If you would like to send something digitally, some words, a picture, you can message me and I will print it out to include. And of course, the fundraiser is still open – please contribute if you can to help RISE support victims of domestic violence. 

Thank you for your support this far. And for any further support you offer to this worthwhile cause.

On a Scale of One to Dead

I see the smiling face of a young woman, whose name will lodge uneasily in my memory, perhaps long after I remember that it is there because she was murdered. I wish I could do something, save her, hold her hand. There is no way to react that seems appropriate, there is no correct response. 

But there are many unwieldy, uncomfortable feelings. Sadness, anger, hopelessness. And these all return, in a different guise as a response to the reactions of media and the punters that suck and spout it. I feel again, sadness, anger, hopelessness, and mostly a weary rage. 

There is one particular media response that I want to address here. 

Radio four spent an almost masturbatory few minutes telling women that it is literally hysterical to be afraid of abduction and murder. Throughout the day, the statistical proof was wielded by many, a soft veneer of reassurance over a subtle misogynist cudgel. 

Clearly many people do not understand why I and so many other women might read it this way. 

Women aren’t stupid. Even when we are scared. We know that every night we walk home it is unlikely that we will be the face on tomorrow’s newspapers. But tell me this; on a scale of one to dead, how are we supposed to assess the many threats we do encounter?

Somebody gets off on dead women, on sexually brutalised women, on frightened women. 

Just look at the box sets and the book shelves. 

Somebody gets off on having sex with powerless, enslaved women. 

Just look at the people trafficking statistics. 

Somebody gets off on the thrill of fear and danger and death that women face. 

Just look at the front pages. 

Somebody gets off on the reduction of women’s bodies to mere objects to use.

Just look at advertising and porn sites.

This is a context that is all around us all the time. And it’s not the end of it. When a man who kills a woman gets five years in prison because his lack of self control is deemed in some way understandable, we learn a lesson about values; we KNOW that his self control would remain marvellously intact should it be tested by someone stronger and more dangerous than himself. Believe me, this tells women a great deal about values. 

When a pay gap persists, when sexism is still pervasive, we learn about values. And I’m not going to bother propping up these assertions. They are all easily discoverable truths – do the work if you don’t believe me. And look up intersectionality whilst you’re there.

When we are attacked and OUR dress, OUR trust, OUR choices, OUR behaviour is criticised and discussed before the behaviour and the choices of our attacker, we learn about values. The inviolability of boys at the expense of girls, the ruined lives of one worth so much more than the other teaches us a lot, more than we sometimes care to know, about values. 

I know that all boys don’t get a life of cherry pie and a clear road to greatness. I know that men struggle and have many challenges. I know that men are more likely to get murdered in public than women. But, whilst acknowledging we need to talk about the issues faced by men a good deal more than we do, and stating that the discussion is one I would gladly support and respect, it is a different problem, for a different conversation. 

When I tell my daughters to take the same precautions as I, as we all have always done, am I being hysterical? Most people on social media, will by now have read the expressions of women’s lived experience, of degrees of assault and how they mitigate for that; how they relentlessly clamp down on their free use of public space to take account of the few shitty men who are too entitled to leave us alone when they fancy having a crack, or who actively enjoy a bit of terrorising women. And you can be sure that all of these women will be able to tell you of times when a banal and tedious situation has escalated suddenly into an abusive or frightening one. Don’t try to tell me that these men haven’t known the power of their ability to frighten women. 

On a scale of one to dead, how does a girl assess the risk to herself of a man that won’t leave her alone, then starts calling her a slag because she isn’t responsive to him? Is that a three, a verbal risk, unpleasant, sure, but unlikely to go any further than the bar where they meet? Or might it become a more frightening seven when he follows her, because she’s wearing a short dress and wasn’t outright rude to him when he first spoke to her, so he got his dim and disingenuous wires crossed?

On a scale of one to dead, if a man grabs your breast in a quiet street, how do you assess the risk of who or what might follow?

On a scale of one to dead, when you are walking alone at night, there is no one about, what is the risk? But every second tv show features a woman getting prettily, brutally murdered in just that scenario, and it will be your fault when they find you, because having a night out with your friends was condemnably more important to you than your own safety.

On a scale of one to dead, when a man has attacked you, grabbed you and groped you in the past, when another has flashed you when you were still a kid, when you personally know too many women who have been seriously sexually assaulted, when random men are pathetically punished for raping a passed out woman, when most rapists get away with it, when a police man lets himself murder a lone women, how do you assess your safety? 

All of you spouting your superior, knowing, statistics, preening in your self-image of dry intelligence are showing only that you know nothing.

You owe us a fucking apology.

What is vandalism?

For some, pulling down the statue of a former slaver in a town built on the riches of that slave trade is a long-awaited and just act. For others it is vandalism and thuggery. I have read comments from people, often working in the cultural sector, that lament this event and compare it to the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddha statues. The argument is that once the feelings of people are allowed to dictate the terms of what we keep as art or culture, we’re on a dangerous path.

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I get that. But the cases are not the same. For all the offence taken in interfaith misunderstandings, the Buddha did not throw stolen dead people into the sea as a part of his business model. 

Statues on the streets and squares of cities have a strange and particular role. They are there to mark, demand even, reverence for the people they represent. In that sense, though the execution may be artistic, they’re not art. They are like a relentless, endurance honours list.

They are certainly not there so that we don’t forget our history. If we had statues to remember our history, the next Bristol square would be crowded with forms that represent the stolen, the branded, the defiled and the drowned. 

The Prime Minister called the act vandalism, claimed the protest had been subverted by thuggishness. But what is vandalism? Thuggishness? Does it depend only on speed? I can’t think of anything more thuggish, more of an obtuse or deliberate act of vandalism that refusing to take down a statue to the glory of a slaver. That is thuggishness, just enacted slowly, in geological time. 

Black people (and others whose history was impacted by colonialism) have been forced, time and again, to be resilient in the face of this kind of obtuseness. There comes a point when failure to act, to understand even, does so much harm it might as well be called violence. The easy habit of reverence for a philanthropist who benefitted a handful of Bristolians has meant more, for decade upon decade, than the pain of black people constantly forced to ask ‘Does anyone hear our story? Or care? Do I matter?’ It causes real pain – something we must all hear in this terrible and hopeful time; perhaps many are deciding to listen for the first time. 

Slowly, dependably, over time, the implication of continued reverence for such violent men causes legitimate and deep pain. Who is the vandal here? The quick snap of the protestors or the slowly grinding damage of a state that refuses to enlighten and better itself, regardless of the harm? 

#BlackLivesMatter

Fury – it’s making me sick.

One of the great bonuses of being an optimist is that I am often able to push difficulties aside, or wait them out, or do something to challenge them. When no solution is available, I think of the old favourite children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and the explanation that the woods, or the bog or the mountains are too high to go over, too wide to go round, oh no, it looks like we’ll just have to go through it. And I know, inherently, truly, that there is another side, that the problem will, at some time, be behind us. And I am certain, somewhere, that is still true. 

But something now is preventing me from feeling it. It’s the politics. It’s the fury I feel in reaction to the politics. Precious connections via screens with loved ones are close to being overburdened, ruined by my anger. But there’s no getting away from it. I’m furious and it’s upsetting me enormously.

Covid-19 is hitting some people so very hard. The terrible sadness of friends saying goodbye to their dearly loved ones on a damned phone. For me, learning that my sister is in a very high risk group due to a childhood accident that left her with no spleen, it is frightening. I have learned to deal with the fears of ordinary anxiety, but this is a new situation and the fear sits, like actual pain, all around. Even if nothing goes wrong, I don’t know when I will be able to sit in the same room as her, and it feels bloody awful. And then I imagine how much worse it must be for her and her family. And how much worse again for other families dealing with loss.

All of this is terrible. For people with young children and little space, it’s terrible. for those facing financial uncertainty, it’s terrible. For those isolated and alone, it’s terrible. And it makes so many of us feel so very sad. But it is the anger that stops me from coping. Call me a big bloody baby, but I don’t know what to do when I don’t know what to do. And I’m so angry. The disdain of a government acting purely in the service of their own access to power is disgusting. In the literal sense of the word, I am disgusted by them. Telling health care workers, risking their lives to care for others that they have carelessly created the perils they face is disgusting. Putting the burden of a response that should rightly belong to all the wealthy on the narrow wedge defined by footballers (unlike many politicians not born to their privilege) is disgusting. Clapping a blocked pay rise in parliament then performatively applauding health care workers for the camera is disgusting. Deluded fan-girls in the print media telling us that the health of Boris Johnson is tantamount to the health of us all is risible, and ultimately, because of the personality-cult intention, disgusting.

Through years of austerity the Conservative government has demonstrated that they have the ability to look past people, to reframe need, vulnerability or bad luck as failings. They have, over and over again, signalled their contempt for people. They have, over and over again, roped in and deluded and pandered to people in order to sustain the trick that keeps themselves in power. And now their ghost writers in the national press talk about discovering who the really important key workers are, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re the minimum wage grunts, and we are supposed to applaud this signalled show of virtuous humility? Fuck you mate, most of us already knew this. Most of us haven’t ridden a tide of contempt over people’s lives for the last god, how many years is it now? How many xenophobic little voters with their Boris Delusion and their nationalistic malapropism of history, their red white and blue clenched little arseholes and their stupidly beating bulldog hearts? Why should I understand them? When I see what the players on the stage perform to keep them happy, I don’t believe they are misunderstood and left behind. I don’t hear, for example, the Boris fan club saying ‘Oo he’s such a fighter, and what a lad, he’s definitely our Brexit hero, but shame about the misery caused by the hostile environment and people dying of hunger because of Universal Credit.’ No.

So contempt is what has been doled out, for so long, in so many ways. And because they are clearly willing to do that to all of us, perhaps I am just returning the favour. They disgust me in a true sense, like something unhealthy and antithetical to our humanity.

Covid-19 hasn’t provided any new insights. and of course, is not the government’s fault. But it has created an environment when the hope might be to expect more, better, to expect something. And what was the go-to? Herd immunity.

There’s nothing, there never was, and in my view, from this government, there never will be. They are dishonest careerists who don’t need to reach very far into themselves to play the worst. This incompetence and callousness is all of it, and for so many, that’s apparently enough. And I’m fucking furious. And it makes me sick.

Flash Sale

We are having a clear-out and I have decided to not hang on to everything, so I am selling some work at knock-down prices and will put any money raised towards funding Salt Lick. There is a mix of Seventy Seven Seas products (my Etsy shop, where I sell recycled hand made art and objects) & art work from past exhibitions. If you see something you like, or would like to know more about any of the pieces, just give me a shout. (You can also check out my Etsy shop to read the fab reviews of my regular sales here.)

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First up, a 53x43cm framed human heart sprouting flowers. It’s cut from recycled aluminium. I sold quite a few of these for £125, and now you can buy this last one for only £45 plus postage.

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3 framed original photos/digital collages. I took the photographs around Brighton. These images are from a series called Value-Added. I thought of the shapes as being sculptural, as though reordering the pixels was sculpting landscapes. I liked the elegant awkwardness, the strange flat intrusion on an ordinary scene.  Individually, they are only £28 or buy all three for £60 plus post. The combined image above is not great quality so here are the prints unframed for clarity. 

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Also from an exhibition, these images come from a series called Viaphilia (made up from Greek and Latin – love of the road. An attempt to account for my obsession with motorway bridges and the queasy, beguiling and untrustworthy beauty of symmetry.) They are around 34 cm wide, laminated prints mounted on board. Selling for only £35 each. I kept them because I really like them – but all money goes to funding my book https://unbound.com/books/salt-lick/… 

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And below, here are the individual prints, for clarity.

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Lastly (for now) these snakes were too fiddly to make as stock for my Etsy shop. They are trial runs, but still look pretty good and a bargain (when you factor in the time they took – don’t ask!) at £22 each or both for £37. 56 x 24 cm, #recycled aluminium and board, hang on the wall.

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I hope some of them find new homes. And if you just would like to back the book, you can pre-order a copy or sign up for any other of the great pledge rewards here: https://unbound.com/books/salt-lick/

Cows for pledgers

I have been experimenting with watercolour mono/lino prints. I cut the lino block a while ago and have been trying different ways of using it. I am very happy with these and will be sending one to anyone who pledges for Salt Lick, or anyone who upgrades or adds a donation to their pledge. Unbound protect the data they hold on pledgers so you will have to send me your address (via the contacts page here, or you can find me on Twitter and Instagram – @luluallison77.)

If you would like to pledge or find out more about Salt Lick: https://unbound.com/books/salt-lick/

I will also be selling them at the upcoming open house as mini-prints, for seven pounds each or a set of four for £20. You can order them directly from me too and all money will go to funding my book – though for just a little more you will also get Salt Lick with your name in the back when it comes out. Each is hand made and unique. They are postcard sized.

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Though the premise of Salt Lick is quite dark, I wanted to get across that the hopefulness of the cows is really important. They accept the ups and downs, they understand life on a scale that stretches like skeins of weather across all the land and all the time. And though they despair of our reckless cruelty and greed, they are still hopeful for us.

The Bonds That Separate

Patriot: Late 16th century: from French patriote, from late Latin patriota ‘fellow countryman’, from Greek patriōtēs, from patrios ‘of one’s fathers’, from patris ‘fatherland’.

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Recently I read a thoughtful article by John Mitchinson on the subject of Englishness, the same morning as I was interrogating my reasons for setting my book Salt Lick in England, not Great Britain. These reflections are a consequence of current politics, of Brexit, of a growing understanding that the bonds that separate us may sadly be deeper than those that connect.

In Salt Lick, I have presumed the break up of the Union. The collapse of a viable rural economy due to cheap food importation leads to a restructuring of the country. This was uncannily brought closer to reality by a leaked email from a government adviser that Britain doesn’t need farms, we could, like that smaller island Singapore, import what we consume. This insular thinking, like Brexit, belongs to an absurd England that still recons itself a world power.

Brexit is for some of those who chose it, a consequence of a white identity that its claimants wish to shore up, to fortify; identity as a bond that separates.

Thinking about the ideas around identity recently, I came to understand that for many people, claiming identity was necessary. It is an assertion of the right to a place, a bulwark against the careless, if not outright hostile, hegemony of the majority. I have grown up with an assumption of belonging that hasn’t been challenged to any significant degree, even when I chose not to fit in to the centre ground. The deficit in this belonging has been the commonplace, if often frightening or infuriating disregards, attacks and impositions experienced by women in a patriarchy. That’s an ongoing fight, but luckily for me, one that is not complicated by the intersection of ethnicity, health, sexuality. I have been free to reject a telling of myself that fits into any specific narrative, whilst I’ve come to understand and respect that this isn’t so carefree an option for others.

But am I to extend the same courtesy to those who feel under attack? People whose experience is that life offers less than they believe it should, and in truth, sometimes offers very little at all? Does their identity matter? Is their whiteness ever going to bring them the confidence and strength in numbers they hope will broaden their paths, their opportunities, their outcomes? I can’t respect this chosen identity, because the analysis of the cause of their disease is so superstitious and mean. And some who cling to whiteness as though it is a precious commodity don’t seek to improve their own lot but rather to diminish the lot of others. This is the risk with identity. Any that is named is such a short step from becoming a description of those who don’t belong,

Patriotism has always embarrassed me. Part of the clue as to why is in the word itself; of one’s father. It is automatically an infantilising word. It seems both infantile and sentimental, to love one’s country, often for the ‘true’ patriots to the point of tears. Perhaps I misunderstand the scope of the word and my love of cultural markers and familiar landscapes is all that is meant by patriotism. But there is no flag to fly for that, no anthem to sing. I haven’t read Orwell’s essay on the subject but I cringe when contemporary politicians on the left try to access a little bit of useful populism and proclaim the need for a new, progressive patriotism. With all due recognition of the perils of capitalist globalism, there is nothing progressive about the concept of a fatherland. 

For a while, as a music-obsessed teenager I remember feeling a huge sense of arrogant, and ignorant, relief that I was born in England where ‘everything’ was happening. The post-punk cultural scene seemed to be the only place where I could possibly desire to belong. And at the same time I hated the political stupidity of the time, reflected and enlarged as it is now, as Thatcherite bombast rinsed the dignity from people’s lives. I was ashamed of the greedy and arrogant history that was still so palpable in the pride of patriots and nationalists.

I used to joke that the first time I felt proud of England was during the seven or so years I spent in other countries, when almost the only people I met who seemed to feel any sense of shame or embarrassment about where they came from were the English. Even the savvy, laid back and cool people I hung out with from other lands were mostly proud of their nationality in a way that seemed extraordinarily naive. 

The landscape, the seasons and, however changing, the climate, give me something wonderful – they give me home. But I know it would be possible to find home, and to love it, somewhere else. I love pubs, enormously, but I don’t feel able to take any credit for them. Where in the world are there not convivial places where people tell tales, fall in or out of love, laugh, show off, meet quietly in the concealing hubbub of the voices of others? Does it matter overly much if there are pewter tankards and black oak beams? I would miss pubs, the particular variant of cosiness, the democratic mix of people, but that is changing in favour of the well-heeled eating from slate plates above stripped wooden flooring anyway – even in what is sometimes taken for the bible of Englishness, The Archers. 

Englishness feels to me to be a burden. But I am not sure that the patriotic expressions of any other country would feel less so. When I lived in Germany, I asked a friend who is a little older than me, an author, why people still spoke so much about Hitler and the Nazis, he told me that he was born in the shadow of a mountain, that mountain was so big and he was born so close to the base that he could run all his life and never be out of that shadow. Everywhere has a dark human history, and as someone said on Twitter in response to my post about identity, none of us would sleep too well if held accountable for the actions of our ancestors. It seems necessary, as John argues, for us not to cop out, to face up to Englishness. But perhaps, I still hope, it isn’t necessary to put it on. 

Other Unbounders, #1 – Tom Ward

“What I love most is the idea that leaving London to go into the countryside seems like stepping beyond the barriers, into this quasi-dangerous world.” – Tom Ward.

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Tom Ward is the author of The Lion and the Unicorn, one of the Unbound projects I was delighted to support with a pledge. Tom noticed that our two books have some similar themes, as can be seen from the quote above, so we decided to explore further. Here is a link to Tom’s interview with me about Salt Lick and below are the questions I asked Tom. It sounds like a great book – please consider backing it if you agree! 

Detectives are often world-weary. They’re cynics because they have seen so much, I presume, of our worse tendencies. Does this make them useful protagonists to unravel complicated stories, as you aren’t forced to deal with too much of their own emotional reactions to things?

The Lion and The Unicorn is a book about high and low culture, and our main characters are tasked with rooting out low culture in many guises, be that dodgy fashion choices, or mass market pop music. Because of this I wanted to poke fun at the idea of the typical detective and have mine be tee-total and into wellness juices – just like more and more of us are becoming today!

My main character is fairly optimistic and open-minded for a police officer. Hopefully this allows him to be shocked by things and go on an emotional journey. Something a more hard-boiled cop might struggle with, as you say.

How did you set the parameters of the bad taste that has become illegal in the book? Did you work it out before writing, or on a case-by-case basis? 

The initial idea was that ‘low culture’ or mass consumable, guilty pleasures would be outlawed by the government as a way to try and raise the collective drive and goals of the population. But, like most regulations it quickly becomes manipulated on a case by case basis to the degree that our main characters struggle to see the difference between contraband and what’s allowed. 

One of our main detectives, Bagby, has a treasure trove of banned books and records squirrelled away in his apartment, including books by Pat Barker, Yuval Noah Harari, and James Kelman whom most of us would probably agree are all ambitious, thoughtful writers.

Whilst I think that the term dystopia is a little over-used, have you ever read or seen a convincing utopia? 

I don’t think I have! I think you need conflict in order to have a narrative arc so the idea of the perfect society may not exist. Having said that, I loved the Redwall books as a child, and the depiction of Redwall Abbey (where the main characters live) seemed like a lovely, peaceful place. Outside of children’s literature I’m not sure a utopia exists, though! 

Do you picture your book as though it is a film? Would you like it to be a film? 

I really love films. I worked in a cinema as a teenager and have interviewed a lot of actors and directors in my day job as a journalist, and I think this all feeds into writing fiction. I definitely visualise scenes in my writing and love writing description. So yes, I would love it to become a film.

Does the world of The Lion and the Unicorn happen in a straight line from now or are there events that permit or promote the necessary changes?

The Lion and The Unicorn is set in 2054, so not too far in the future. I started writing it in 2016 which was a tumultuous year with things like Brexit and Trump coming to pass. It seemed that, on a national scale, things were getting more and more tense, and we’ve arguably continued down that path ever since. I imagined a revolution having taken place some years before the start of the novel, so that by the time the novel begins Britain is supposed to be this settled, peaceful utopia. But in many ways the revolution was a false victory, and the same old systems are now allowed to operate with impunity.

You asked in your questions to me whether there is an exploration of homecoming and connection in relationship to presence in nature and said it’s something you explore in all your books. How does that come about in The Lion and the Unicorn?

The film version of Children of Men is a big influence on my writing. The story is great, it’s beautifully shot, but what I love most is the idea that leaving London to go into the countryside seems like stepping beyond the barriers, into this quasi-dangerous world. I’ve always felt my calmest and happiest when I’m near trees, so I wanted my main characters to leave London and head out into the countryside to see what’s out there. I’m from Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire, so I wanted to play on the north/south divide too, and have the north as one of these closed off, remote places in the book, and sort of mythologise that.

Thanks to Tom for taking the time to answer. If you too like the sound of The Lion and the Unicorn, you can pre-order and support its publication here: unbound.com/books/the-lion-the-unicorn/