A Bit More Personally...

As a shy child, in the 1970s and ’80s, I loved visiting my local library. Coming from a rumbustious household, I embraced the feeling of solitude and order. As soon as I caught the intoxicating scent of old paper and polish and heard that satisfying thunk of the librarian’s stamp, I relaxed. 

It was no red brick or arts and crafts architectural beauty, more of a concrete civic centre box with scratchy grey carpets. But that didn’t matter. It was a destination, and I can still vividly remember the feeling of calm and freedom that came over me as I walked through the door. It was my haven.

My love of reading and creative writing has been a loyal companion. It’s safe to say I didn’t excel at school. Despite coming from an academic family, university didn’t beckon. Instead, I found my home in Fleet Street. Finding, listening and sharing stories made sense to me. It was like slipping into a warm bath. I started at Fleet Street News Agency aged 20 and never looked back, going on to work on most of the national newspapers, including The News of the World, The Daily Mail and Daily Express.

For 8 years, I worked as Deputy then Acting Editor of IPC’s weekly Pick Me Up magazine, helping to launch it into the market in 2005 with a debut readership of half a million. It was the most successful magazine launch in a decade and secured the BSME launch of the year in the process. I was named as IPC’s ‘True Life Writer of the Year’ the following year.

These days, you’ll find me writing fiction and non-fiction books, but I still write for newspapers and magazines. Retaining my skills as a journalist helps me to stay a sharper novelist. I may have left Fleet Street, but it has never left me. Over the past 13 years, I have written 15 books for the Big Five publishers, 4 of which have been Top Ten Sunday Times and international bestsellers.

My comfort zone is research. I love hunting through the archives and interviewing our wartime generation. The more you listen, the more you hear. It can start off about the day-to-day stuff, tea dresses and Spam, Victory waves and vermillion, but then it graduates to the guts of wartime life, the pain and the loss, the hopes and the dreams. 

I have lost count of how many interviews I have done, but it runs to hundreds. Many are on my podcast, From the Library with Love. I always keep in mind something a redoubtable cockney called Eileen told me.

"When you’re 80 you’re invisible, when you’re 90 you might as well be dead. I may have snow on the roof but I’m not old. I have stories to tell."

I recognise what a remarkable privilege it is when someone tells you their unique history. Stories are living, breathing things. They have a heartbeat. They deserve to be nurtured and cared for. History is never consigned to the past. To me, it has its own emotional pulse and, as I found over the past 13 years, is blisteringly relevant to our lives today.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The Darling Buds of May by H.E Bates

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

The Kids from One End Street by Eve Garnett

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf