On this page you can find a selection of writings on topics of interest to me.
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Thanks to a recent bout of sickness, which had me confined to bed for three days, I recently had the time to re-read this childhood favourite, the ‘Chronicles of Prydain’ series by Lloyd Alexander. It’s many years since I last read the books, but I must have read them multiple times, as so much of the narrative and dialogue was […]
“Got to start by finding it, have we? Not allowed to start by looking for it, I suppose?“ The above words, spoken by Puddleglum the Marshwiggle in CS Lewis’s The Silver Chair*, always resonate strongly with me. They are especially meaningful in these days of artificial intelligence (AI), where it seems every question can be answered at the touch of […]
The Hunger Games. Jane Eyre. Watership Down. Brideshead Revisited. Bridget Jones’s Diary. Anna Karenina. The Secret Garden. The Hobbit. What do these stories have in common? Not much, at first glance, other than that they’re widely recognised as classics, much loved by successive generations. Whether or not each story is to your taste – not all fans of Brideshead Revisited […]
It’s been two years since I created my first mash-up of William Shakespeare and The Walking Dead; so, as it’s Shakespeare’s birthday today, I thought it was high time I pulled together another one! As mentioned in my last post, I’m convinced that if Shakespeare were alive today he’d be working in television; and The Walking Dead – with its […]
The rationale: I wrote this piece about three years ago, and initially didn’t dare publish it as I was worried I might fall foul of copyright law. However, I like it too much to let it sit in my ‘Miscellaneous Projects’ folder gathering dust, so I’ve decided to publish it with the proviso that, if it turns out I’m breaching […]
Fantasy writing often gets a bad press. It’s accused of not being serious literature, providing nothing but escapism, and encouraging us to sit around waiting for a magic resolution to all our problems. I disagree with all of the above. I will declare an interest in the matter: speculative fiction (SF; encompassing many sub-genres including fantasy, sci-fi and, yes, the […]
Good writing is good writing, whatever the century. And, as we approach the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, it’s interesting to wonder what Will would be working on if he were alive today. As he had an eye for what was popular, I can’t help but think he’d be working in TV; in particular, I can picture him writing one of my […]