Any Questions

It's such a long time since I was last on Radio 4's Any Questions programme that when I read an email inviting me to the programme at  St.Endellion Church in Cornwall on July 26, I thought I was being asked to be a member of the audience.  But no: this was an invitation  to join the panel: Lord (Roy) Hattersley, now aged 80, former senior Labour politician; Jacob Rees Mogg, a Conservative MP ,  Philip Collins, a Times columnist - and me!
The form hasn't changed. One is picked up by car and delivered by 6, in this case to a hotel near Port Isaac, to meet the chairman, Jonathon Dimbleby,  and  the team over dinner. Everybody is ultra-friendly and convivial though  (perhaps excepting Roy Hattersley) not quite concealing their stage fright. I realised later that the others - or at least the two politicians - had access to some kind of party briefing book, giving the proper responses to any potential question. I had had a long telephone conversation with the programme's producer, who had listed the 10 subjects most  likely to come up, suggesting that I prepared opinions on them. So I was all ready with wit and wisdom about such hot topics as  Britain's relationship with the EU, British interests in the Middle East, the UK's nuclear deterrent, discrimination against women in the BBC  and so on.
Not one of them came up.
The church was packed full, and presumably  the audience had handed in a pile of questions on all these and many other subjects,  but  to my dismay (and terror) I was quite unprepared for those chosen for the live programme.  The Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury and payday loans; the  internal politics of the Labour party and  unions; the alleged economic recovery. None of these were subjects on which  a non-economist, non-Anglican, non-socialist has much useful to contribute.  Mercifully we moved  on to the easier topics of royal-baby-mania and house prices in second-home-land, and those I could talk about. On the whole, I'd say it was fun, but not  my finest hour.
But  was it good publicity? Will anyone look for and buy my books as a result of hearing me on Any Questions?
And to that question I have no answer at all.

New Edition, New Book

The Fifties Mystique sold out within less than a year of publication. (I don't know how many copies were printed.) Quartet Books decided not to reprint, so for a while the book has been unobtainable. The only copy on Amazon UK is listed at £5000, which is presumably code meaning "not available".
However, there is an E-version, and  within about a month a second, print edition, published by The Cornovia Press, will come out. So, to all the frustrated readers who have written to me asking how to get hold of the book: it's coming soon. And so is my new novel.
           Dead Woman Walking is also published by The Cornovia Press.
           By pure, unplanned coincidence, my  advance copies of Dead Woman Walking arrived here on the 75th anniversary of the House of Commons vote that permitted Jewish children to be taken from Germany to safety in the United Kingdom. Many people had volunteered to help, either by fostering  children and  giving them homes, or by escorting the children on the long train journey. This rescue of Jewish children was a generous, charitable gesture by this country, unmatched anywhere else in the world. The scheme continued until war broke out; by then, about ten thousand children had been brought out of Germany to safety.
           One of the several parallel story-lines in  Dead Woman Walking  concerns  a character who appeared  in several of my previous crime novels, Dr Fidelis Berlin. As a small child she  was brought to  England on a Kindertransport . On arrival, it was discovered that there was no identification pinned to her clothes.   Now in old age, she has belatedly decided to try to discover her true identity.
           Another strand of the book is based on  the first years of my adult, married life, when we lived in Edinburgh's New Town. I'm indebted to Martin Edwards, author of the crime-fiction blog
Do You Write Under Your Own Name?, for the suggestion that I should return to the characters in my very first novel, A Charitable End.
             Dead Woman Walking will be available in (some) shops  on August 8th.

AT THE FOWEY LITERARY FESTIVAL

As I conversed with the brilliantly perceptive and acute Professor Helen Taylor at the Fowey Festival, the huge tent was flapping and twisting in  the gale force wind, so noisily that it must have been hard to hear what we said. But the audience was large and responsive, so the session was fun  for me - and, I hope, for them.
Kind Andrew, the manager of Waterstones in Truro, was running the bookshop. He'd very kindly made a huge effort to find some copies of the  (already out of print) The Fifties Mystique,  and managed to scrape up a couple of dozen, as well as some of my novels. I'm glad to say that they were all sold - in fact, according to Andrew, more of my books were sold than of the far more famous speaker who came after me that day, and of nearly all the othr speakers that week.|More due to the fact that I was on my home ground than anything  else, but a rare enough experience for me to feel it's (just) OK  to boast!
As the publishers aren't reprinting (why, oh why?) I'm hoping to do it myself as a print-on-demand book. But so far the programmes - Lulu, Create-Space etc. - have defeated me. But watch this space.

Fowey Lit Fest.

In the week  when I'm due to speak about The Fifties  Mystique at the Fowey Literary Festival - on Thursday 9 May , at 11.45 -  I've just received the perversely timed information that the print edition  has sold out. Luckily the e-book edition is now available  -  though somebody has yet to solve the technical problem of providing an author's autograph for an electronic book - and another print edition should be available quite soon.

            If you're anywhere within reach of Fowey this week and next, the Lit Fest is well worth a visit. Freed this year from its association with Daphne du Maurier, it has an interesting programme, and its setting is ravishingly pretty. There can be few places as charming  at this time of year. 

I'm going to be speaking on day two, after a session about Fifty Shades of Feminism, a collection of essays exploring "the many shades of being a woman", and just hope that, by the time it's my turn, the audience won’t have had enough feminism for one day.

The Running Heroine

The "Running Hero" is a character who appears in a series of books. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, even Miss Marple can be described as Running Heroes.
In my crime novels - 20, so far - there are several running bit-part players, such as the solicitor whose client-list includes otherwise unconnected characters. The fact is that even my stand-alone novels are nearly all set in the same world, and some of the people  in them  appear in more than one book, not always as the central character - for example, the archaeologist Professor Thea Crawford, who is the heroine in THE ONLY SECURITY and takes a minor role in several later books.
One of these not-quite-heroines is the psychiatrist Dr Fidelis Berlin. Several critics and commentators have called her my most interesting character, and I found myself wondering if she/I could discover more about her background.  How did she come to be the unaccompanied, unidentified infant who arrived in England on a kindertransport? I didn't know the answer myself , but then, I never do.  If I were not making discoveries as I write I'd have no interest in doing it..
The book that answers those questions  is coming out in June.
 DEAD WOMAN WALKING tells the story of Fidelis Berlin, and also reveals what happened to some of the characters in my very first book, A CHARITABLE END.
It was first published   40 years ago.

BRIAN SEWELL ON ANTHONY  BLUNT

In today's Sunday Times, the second volume of  Brian Sewell's autobiography is serialised. One section is about his help to Anthony Blunt when the press had just discovered that he was one of the "Cambridge traitors."  I read Sewell's words with revulsion.The controversy about the Cambridge spies is old history now, but I remember it well - and also, its background. For growing up in the 1950s, one was  permanently conscious of the Cold War, and of the threat of Hot War, which would  inevitably lead to nuclear annihilation. I suppose we were afraid, though I don't remember feeling fear until I had children to protect in the 1960s; after that, of course, one lived in dread of nuclear war.   The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most terrifying periods of my life.
        The point of all this is that the fear was of something real - nuclear war.  The threat was genuine. And the people who secretly worked for the Russians  were not romantic heroes, and they didn't have the right to follow their consciences. One can forgive their behaviour when they were young in the 1930s, before everyone knew the full horror of Stalin's Russia, but they didn't recant or repent after the war. Instead they continued as  traitors to their country, to the people they knew, to  their families. They wanted to  destroy European civilisation, and near as dammit did so. 
          It's fine to look back  now it's all over and forgive one's enemies, but don't  ever look back and underestimate their culpability.  Anthony Blunt's  actions  were intended to bring the world he had grown up in  to a hideous end.
         Some people have suggested that his later life as an academic art historian and art adviser to the Queen  redeemed the crimes of his youth. I doubt if those who died as a result - admittedly indirect  - of his treachery would have agreed. In fact,  anyone old enough to remember the Blunt-fuss and the Cambridge Spies and Burgess and Maclean - in fact anyone for whom The Fifties Mystique  is the stuff of memory  - will take a view of their own. I'd love to hear what it is.

JOBS FOR THE GIRLS?

A shamingly or shockingly long gap since my last post, partly (but only partly) explained by my being away on holiday for a while. Back in Cornwall now, in the wet wind that has become our default daily weather. Although summer visitors, usually confined to more prosperous resorts, are seldom aware of it, this is still almost the poorest county in the UK, and still qualifies (along with  Sicily  and Northern Portugal, for special EU subsidies. As has  been said, when England sneezes, Cornwall  gets pneumonia - which will be even more noticeable if the present government really introduces regional rates of pay in public service jobs, as it has threatened. When I was first involved, as a "quangaroo" - a member of quangoes - with the public services (NHS etc) there were regional rates of pay, which ensured  that nobody from more prosperous areas would ever apply to work here, because it meant a drop in salary. Do we want to re-introduce immobile and aggrieved workers in the public sector and a low (because uncompetitive) standard of work? Yes, says one feminist friend. The chaps, she thinks, will be leaving in droves  before they get stuck for keeps in a low-pay area, which will mean more public sector jobs going to women.
Which is not , I told her, what I'd call another triumph for feminism.