I am saddened, cheesed off and worried to find my GP has retired. It wasn't the patients, I'm told, it was NHS bureaucracy that drove him onto the golf course. It takes an age to build a rapport with your first port of call for medical assistance. Explaining ailments from scratch to a stranger in a one-disease-per-ten-minute-slot [...]
On travel writing trips I always keep a diary to record personal impressions outside of the 'who, what, when, where, why' of newspaper copy. The diary runs to more than half a million words. I've never shared it but the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz made me reread my diary of a three-day [...]
When a pub closes down it's like losing a friend. You think back to good times had and wonder what might fill this sudden hole in your life. So, farewell to the Sussex Cricketer. The pub by the entrance to Sussex County cricket ground in Eaton Road, Hove, pulled stumps on Sunday. After calling the [...]
A very happy Crimebo to you all. Huge thanks to everyone who has read, supported and helped spread the word about the Danny Lancaster crime thriller series in 2019. As a special 'thank you' here's a seasonal short story. I admit it's an odd one, written for the wonderful Facebook group UK Crime Book Club, [...]
Watching the glittering bird sweep down out of the haze and kiss the grass brought out the barely concealed schoolboy in me. I couldn't make it to Goodwood Aerodrome in Sussex last Thursday to watch the return of the Silver Spitfire from her Longest Flight round-the-world adventure but the live feed caught the magic moment. [...]
The Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery is generating a lot of excitement. I am just old enough to recall Tut's last London gig at the British Museum in 1972. Me and a schoolmate were working in the museum canteen evenings, weekends and for the occasional cocktail party. I remember sashaying between groups of archaeologists [...]
It’s been a great week since the launch of LAST ORDERS, a crimefiction novella and the seventh in my Danny Lancaster crime fiction series. LAST ORDERS is a locked pub mystery with the tagline Trapped In A Pub With A Killer. Huge thanks to @damppebbles for the fantastic blogtour which ended yesterday having attracted very [...]
A huge 'thank you' from me and Danny to Emma at @damppebbles and everyone who made last week's blogtour a runaway success. My six Danny Lancaster crime thrillers featured over six days with 11 incisive, no-nonsense reviews. Thanks, too, for the many 'likes' and RTs. Emma's brilliant reviewers highlighted aspects of Danny I'm always aiming [...]
Watching the iconic Dakota transport aircraft airborne for D-Day75 reminded me vividly of the day I had the privilege and pleasure of flying in one. Our battlefield press travel trip to Normandy ended at Caen-Carpiquet Airport. A modern terminal stood near a concrete bunker, relic of when the airfield was held by the 10th SS [...]
You never know what doors will open when you write a book. After publication of GUNNER, based on my father’s war diary, I was contacted by Geoff Maple whose dad served in the same regiment. After swapping info by email we finally met up last week on the rain-swept terraces of Dover Castle in Kent. [...]
