Reading and Writing is my life
Josephine Tey’s book A Daughter of Time proves that most of the history is, as Henry Ford would have us believe, 'bunk'. It opened my eyes to the fact that what we were taught at school as being true was written usually by someone with a political point to make or, a playwright trying to entertain his fellow man and that the truth was not allowed to get in the way of a good story. This is important as book number four will show.
I have always been a lover of puns. The more excruciating the better. There used to be a radio programme called My Word. At the end of each half hour Dennis Norden and Frank Muir would have a few minutes to come up with a story to illustrate a phrase or saying. These were put into a book called The Ultimate ‘My Word’ Collection. The stories inevitably had the most complicated plots and always ended in the most wonderful puns. It made me wish I had such a grasp of the English language to write such funny pieces of prose.
My sport is Judo. Once I came across a ‘new’ book on the sport that was full of mistakes. I was sufficiently annoyed to complain to the publishers. A few months later the publishers wrote back to me and asked would/could I write a book on my sport? I said yes and did, in fact I wrote three. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of walking into Waterstones seeing your book, with your name on the spine, on their shelves, let me tell you it is the most wonderful feeling you will ever have.
My history master said I would never have any interest in his subject. Having read Josephine Tey’s book it proved him wrong and I started reading back copies of the local newspaper. In fact I read every edition from January 6th 1900 to December 31st 1999. As a result The Twentieth Century Westmorland Gazette was my fourth book. Four years of sitting in a dusty archives room reading history, written as it happened, made me realise the newspaper reporter is the true historian not some academic sat in his warm study years after trying to imagine what it was like.
My fifth book? Well, it isn’t written yet but if it takes me down the paths my previous ones have; if it gives me the thrill of again seeing my name on the bookshop’s shelves; if it helps educate as well as entertain just one other reader, as well as myself, then I shall have done what every author hopes to have done the moment he, or she, opens a blank page and starts to type.
