Reading Matter(s)

I like to re-read my old favourites and at the moment it's Harry Bowling. Like Dickens, Harry and Catherine Cookson chronicled stories from the places and people they knew best. They told it all without fuss, elaboration or boastfulness. They used the vernacular of the street combined with an instinctive skills of diarists that make them mesmerizing. They wrote with the voice inside their heads. "Listening" to them was how I learned to harness a force inside my own head, this creative internal voice that became a way to reconcile my experiences in life. Through reading, I found help to articulate my emotions. Dickens with his keen observance and compassion, Harry with his humour, Catherine with her candid honesty. I came to know these writers and all the others that followed, intimately. What wonderful teachers we find between the pages of books. And they are all uniquely ours and eternal.

For those who would like to know more about the London area I set my novels, please follow this link

http://www.islandhistory.org.uk/