FEBRUARY 2010

We Are All Made of Glue paperback is coming out on February 25^th! These are the advertising posters that will go up on rail and tube stations. I’m glad they put the line about how to pronounce my name – I’ve often wondered.

This year sees the anniversary of the death of Leo Tolstoy, and I was among a number of writers who penned a short tribute that was published in the Guardian. (See Articles).

January was meant to be the month when I kept my head down and made progress with my new book, but as usual I’ve been gadding about too much, and writing bits for magazine’s and newspapers, from the New Statesman and AdelaideAdvertiser to Quantas in-flight magazine.

Part of this is in preparation for the Adelaide Festival at the end of February, plus a mini-tour of Australia (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). I’ve just seen from the programme that I’m to be on a panel with Geoff Dyer, Andrea Levy and William Dalrymple, chaired by Michael Cathcart. Should be interesting. In the blurb it says I will talk about writing sex scenes. Cripes! What am I to say?

In February, BookBite (part of the Booktrust) launched a campaign to encourage older people to become writers, and I’ve been speaking and writing about the joys of becoming a published author later in life (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was published when I was 58) though I wonder whether I should be more forthright about how dogged and also how very lucky you have to be. In This Writing Life you can read the piece I wrote for the Times, or you can look at the Timesonline link. There’s also a link to the short story competition that’s part of the campaign, with a picture of me looking wild and mad leaning out of a semi-derelict caravan somewhere in Derbyshire. In the media, they refer to us over-60’s writers as the ‘silver scribblers’, which made me wonder – don’t they all dye their hair, like me?

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 !

Wishing you all a wonderful year. Sorry I’ve been a bit out of touch. My New Year’s Resolution is to keep this page up to date at least once a month.

I’d like to say I’ve been keeping my head down and working on my new novel, but I must admit I’ve also been spending a lot of time writing articles, doing interviews, sitting on trains, opening wide for the dentist, phoning plumbers, and other pursuits.

Last week, for example, my central heating and hot water boiler broke down. I left messages on the phones of four plumbers; none phoned back. Guessing that the problem was to do with the freezing weather, I tried to find the handbook for the boiler, but it was lost. I did eventually get through to a plumber, who said he was too busy to come out for a couple of days. Then a breakthrough - I found the number for the boiler manufacturers. I phoned, and was told the emergency engineer would cost £299 and would take a few days because they were so busy. But there is a technical helpline, they said. I tried to phone the technical helpline, but it’s an 0906 number, and my telephone informed me that I’d set my phone-line to bar premium numbers. I hunted around for my phone handbook, to see whether I could change it, but it was lost. By now the house was really freezing and I was on the verge of despair. Then I looked on the internet. For some inexplicable reason, even the internet connection was freezing up and running very very slowly due to the icy conditions. In the end, I chanced upon a website which was a chat-forum of plumbers. These chaps were comparing notes about how many frozen condensate pipes they’d had to attend to recently. Yes, I have a new supposedly-super-efficient condensing boiler, but the pipe carrying the waste water runs down from the attic, outside the house, so in really cold weather, when it’s most needed, I’ve discovered, it stops working. However, by now the sun was at its high point, and the pesky condensate outlet was within its beam. And just to help it along, I put a fan-heater on in the roof space where the boiler is located. And, amazingly, after about an hour, the boiler started working again.

Then I found the handbook for the telephone. Then I found the handbook for the boiler. Then a couple of plumbers phoned.

I hope this isn’t an omen for how things are going to be in 2010. Though at least you could say there’s a happy ending.

August 2009
Just got a request from ‘Cube’ magazine for a small piece to encourage young writers by talking about what I was like when I was eighteen (posted my reply under This Writing Life).

Spending August in Sheffield may not seem your idea of a treat, but believe me, it’s great. The city is quiet (no students next door!) and leafy, the sun shines when it gets round to it, and the Peak District is just a hop away. See the new page on Peak District walks.

I am a huge fan of George Eliot, so I felt very honoured to be asked to write an introduction to a new edition of The Mill on the Floss for Vintage Books.

I’ve contributed a small piece to the New Statesman’s ‘Red Reads’ about one of my favourite books - The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill.

The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill recounts the radical ideas behind the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. When it first came out in 1971, three years after the ‘May events’ of 1968, slogans such as ‘Soyez realiste – demandez l’impossible!’ and ‘L’imagination au pouvoir!’ were still ringing in our ears (they sounded better in French). Most history I had read before then had been a dull chronicle of kings and queens, statesmen and battles. Now here at last was a history of people I could identify with. Hill captures the intellectual drama of the Putney debates, the mystical utopianism of Diggers, Quakers and Shakers, the peculiar lifestyle convictions and ferocious sectarianism of countless small groups like the Ranters and Fifth Monarchists, which quite eclipsed those of our East End commune. When I first read it, I remember being disappointed that Hill himself had not sided with this groupuscule against that or given a ‘correct’ Marxist analysis of their demands. Now I realise that it’s a measure of his greatness both as a scholar and as a writer that he can convey the power and excitement of this moment of change while reminding us of its fragility.

I have also written a paragraph for Metro’s full page spread on Amnesty International’s collection of short stories called Freedom,to which I have contributed, in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

While researching my second novel, Two Caravans, I learned about the modern forms of slavery which we still tolerate. “Nobody has the right to make someone their slave” says Article 4 of the UDHR. But instead of old-style slavers we now have people-traffickers, who prey on the desperation of impoverished people like Maria, a Ukranian woman in her early forties, who left home to find work in Italy to fund her daughter’s education. When her visa expired, a man she’d met said he could arrange work for her in the UK. But once she arrived in London she was beaten, raped and forced into prostitution. She was sold three separate times and made to work all over London. Because yes, even British men pay for sex with trafficked women. My story for Freedom is about a woman like Maria.

It’s nice to be asked to do things like this. But when will I ever find time to write another book?

July 2009

Many thanks to all who came to hear me at the Buxton Festival. You were a fabulous audience – you even laughed in all the right places. You can’t imagine how horrible it is to read something which you hope will amuse people, only to be met by stony silence.

The Orwell panel event on Friday morning called ‘What Makes a Good Political Novel’ was great fun. On the platform with me were Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Robert McCrum and Chris Cleave, with Matthew Parris in the chair. The Buxton audience was incredibly brainy, in fact they outsmarted the panel and asked very erudite questions. Fortunately the person who asked the question always seemed to know the answer. Matthew kept us all in line, and stopped the discussion from degenerating into ‘…yes but everything’s really political…’ on the one hand, and long lists of people’s favourite books on the other hand. (Still, it’s only what you’d expect from a man who once jumped into the River Thames to save a dog.) And what did we conclude? I’m blowed if I can remember.

To find out more, read what Robert McCrum wrote in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/26/orwell-buxton-literary-festival

Oxfam event 18^th July

On Saturday I did a reading in the Oxfam shop on Fulwood Road, Sheffield, in honour of the new Oxfam Short Stories Collection. This is a wonderfully varied set of stories from many familiar and respected writers, ranging from 200 sizzling words by Ian Rankin to a fairytale from John Le Carre to an excerpt from Sebastian Faulks’s new novel. I read a lovely story by Beryl Bainbridge about a spooky radio, and also a chunk from We’re All Made of Glue. There are four volumes, each of about ten stories – a great bargain at just £5 each. The lady from Oxfam told us that if you buy just twelve averagely-priced Oxfam books, it’s enough to provide a goat for a poor farming family in rural Africa.

There’s a nice account of this event on the Oxfam website

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/books/?p=2007&books

Coming up: Cheltenham Festival in October

Just heard I’m going to be doing a slot at the Cheltenham Festival on 18^th October with adorable Patrick Gale. I’ll put it up in the Events section when I know the details.

Bye for now – I’m just going out to take Cookie for a walk.

August 2009

Had a wonderful time at the Edinburgh Book Festival – and the weather was nice for a change!

Apart from the wonderful Edinburgh audiences, Edinburgh is famous for the friendliest green room (the Yurt ) where they serve Scottish Whisky (but not to me –I like the thought of whisky but I prefer to drink tea). Catherine Lockerbie, the legendary founder of the festival was missed, but her spirit lives on.

I met up with wonderful people at the Scotland – Russia club, and also the wonderful Scottish Ukrainian Society – look at this cake they baked for me.

Apart from my own event, I did an event with PEN, an event for the Amnesty International short story collection which was launched there (very spectacular – the lights went out!) and one with my friend and fellow hill-walker, Raja Shehadeh, human rights lawyer and author of Palestinian Walks, at Word Power Books.

I had dinner with lovely Joan Bakewell (the official Voice of Older People – or Voop as she is now known) and we plotted a glamorous, adventurous and autonomous old age (well, Joan at least will be glamorous, we’ll both be adventurous, and I hope all oldies will be autonomous).

And I met the delightful Malawian author Samson Kambalu . His novel The Jive Talker: or How to Get a British Passport takes you to the heart of a warm, sad, funny country – this is a view of Africa which is not often seen by the outside world.

September

Dublin – an event for the Irish Independent Literary Festival with Claire Kilroy. It was a lovely sunny weekend, and I found time to do an open-top bus tour of Dublin, and saw some of the James Joyce places.

Australia – an event at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane, then a little holiday at Cape Tribulation. There is a picture of me in a wetsuit on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef, but it is not for the fainthearted. I also walked up Mount Sorrow. Also not for the fainthearted.