All articles in Fiction
12th September, 2016 in Fiction
From Roald Dahl to George Bernard Shaw: Sheds of famous authors
September 2016 marked the centenary of Roald Dahl’s birth. The celebrated author wrote many of his most popular books in his garden shed at his house in Great Missenden. Every morning for over thirty years he would travel through the garden to the small brick shed. He wrote in a…
13th April, 2016 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment, Fiction
The beginnings of Bond
The idea of writing a spy novel had apparently been in Fleming’s mind for a decade before he finally decided to commit the book to paper. Little did he know the phenomenon he was about to create when he sat down behind his typewriter on the morning of 15 January 1952 to start the…
13th January, 2016 in Fiction, Local & Family History
London in literature
No other city comes close to London in the world of literature. Its streets, parks and buildings have provided homes for its authors, inspiration for their imaginations and settings for their stories. In the fourteenth century London provided Chaucer with a home above Aldgate fro…
16th December, 2015 in Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Women in History
The lessons of Agatha Christie
As the author of nine murder mysteries who has dared follow in the illustrious footsteps of Agatha Christie, I am struck by the fact that the whodunnit ‘formula’ she invented and polished to perfection is now 100 years old. Agatha Christie wrote her first novel The Mysterious Aff…