The importance of books This Saturday, I’m at the Au’Tour du Livre book festival in the nearby town of Vic en Bigorre behind a table loaded with my books. I’ll be hoping for readers and I’ll be talking to writers I know. Last weekend I spent magic moments hunting through boxes of second-hand books at the Amis des Animaux fete […]
Heavy books, light books, eBooks and my books
The books of my childhood When I was a kid, few of us had bookshelves of children’s stories at home. There were fewer books for children and they were solid tomes. I was lucky. My mother took me to the only public library, the Queen Victoria Library in Salisbury, Rhodesia. It was a remarkable 50 year-old building, but that was […]
Tall stories, true stories, lies, fiction, facts and truth-telling
Writing fictions, memoirs and versions of my truth In the last few months I have published three books. The first is a novel, the second is a book of poetry, the inspiration on which the novel is based and the third is a memoir. They are – The Love and Wisdom Crimes A coming-of-age adventure story about a young white […]
Lily and the baby that is the colour of love
That song about Lily, the pretty migrant from Djibouti Once again on Tuesday evening, the Krama Singers rehearsed the Pierre Perret 1977 protest song about Lily, who came to France in a ship full of immigrants ready to collect garbage in Paris. It’s a song I’ve grown to love as I’ve grown to love France – though I also see […]
Stories about wars that stop us remembering to forget
Black Cowboys in the Wild West and African-American soldiers in WW2 There are facts we don’t know and facts we choose not to know because they don’t suit us. There are facts that are hidden from us by politicians and power-hungry people and there are facts which are distorted by the media, by myth-makers, advertisers and film makers. When it […]