Book reviews
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
I always wanted to be a writer and I have always read a lot but, if you don't want to be a writer, it gives you more time just to read a lot.
Still, I feel guilty if I start reading too early in the day. So I compromise: at four o'clock in the afternoon, regardless of the state of play of my work, even if I am mid-sentence, I stop, and pick up the book I am currently reading. That is the theory. In practice, if there is a pressing deadline, I carry on.
In this section you will discover my enthusiasms, my passions, and the writers I discover and uncover. Increasingly, I am turning to writers who have become unfashionable, even forgotten. Like my friend Eric Brown, I am keen to assist in the resurrection of dead and buried writers, those craftsmen and craftswomen who were once popular but whose works, undeservedly, have disappeared from popular consciousness. Eric's principal passion was Rupert Croft-Cooke; mine is Howard Spring.
Here is a list of my reading since I began keeping a record. All of them are recommended to some degree.