Reading Christopher Priest

As I have noted before on this blog, I have had tendency, which though it has declined, was strong in the 1980s-2000s of reading all the books that I could by a particular author.  I have written here of my engagement with the books of Michael Moorcock and Michael Dibdin.  Back in June, finishing the last (so far) published book by this author that I had not so far read, I was reminded that I could put Christopher Priest in this category.  In some ways he is similar to the previous two, that whilst he can write realistic fiction, often he writes along the borderlands between fantasy and magic realism.  I have been impressed by some of Priest's books and dismayed by others.  Yet, his writing is always engaging if only because it infuriates and I feel that despite his long career he is even more under-rated in mainstream culture even than Moorcock.

Priest was born in 1943 making him five years younger than Moorcock.  He began publishing short stories in 1966 including in 'Impulse' and in 'New Worlds' which Moorcock edited 1965-9 and 1971.  Unlike Moorcock and other British science fiction authors of the late 1960s/early 1970s, Priest's work does not engage with an overly fantastical approach and seems uninfluenced by the drugs culture of the era.  Perhaps that is not a correct statement, as many of his characters can have a distorted perception of reality or can be thrust into a delusional state.  However, whereas contemporaries at that time could see such states and perceptions as liberating for Priest's protagonists they are at least challenging if not down right dangerous. 

Priest's work, even when considering fantastical ideas, remains grounded in reality, sometimes cynically.  There is an air in Priest's work of the individual losing control whether to stronger individuals or to larger elements in society or the environment.  This is not to say that Priest's work is fatalistic, it is just that he is very adept at painting the kind of nasty people we can all encounter in real life.  Naturally this keeps Priest's writing 'grounded' even when touching the fantastical and his portrayal of characters can be more effectively painfully acute than those of strictly realist writers.

Priest published his first novel, 'The Doctrinaire' in 1970.  It is a short story collection and is of its time.  Whilst many of the stories could have been produced by many other writers of science fiction at the time, as reviewers note, Priest's ability with unpleasant characters and settings is apparent.  This should not be taken to suggest he is a horror writer and that makes his writing more penetrative, Priest knows that the greatest evil is not extravagant but mundane.

I have read 'Fugue for a Darkening Island' (1972).  I came to this book after having read many of his subsequent books.  I think if I had not read other Priest books by then I would have shunned him entirely.  There are a few reviews online which you can find for yourself which highlight how racist a book it is.  However, there seems to be no record on the trouble it caused.  As far as I can see it really only began to attract criticism during the 1980s in the context of race riots such as that in Brixton in 1981.  The book portrays a Britain in the near future which is under an authoritarian government.  Britain is overwhelmed by refugees from sub-Saharan Africa fleeing a nuclear exchange in the region.  By the time the novel is set, Britain is in the midst of a racial civil war between blacks and whites.  The story has little narrative direction, it is a 'slice of life' portrayal, but this can be said to characterise a number of his novels and in fact, many works of British contemporaries like Moorcock and J.G. Ballard.

The story has a clearly biased perspective, showing the blacks as more brutal and a greater threat to Britain and 'Britishness' than white authoritarianism.  Apparently it is not published often (though is available on Amazon still) and this may explain why it is not a 'set book' for the BNP and other racist political parties.  The entire principle of the books appears to pander to all the paranoia about Britain being 'over-run' by refugees from non-white ethnic groups, even during the 1990s when there was net emigration from the UK with so many middle class people moving to France, Spain and Florida. 

It is difficult to gauge Priest's political stance, though apparently he was angered by criticisms he received in the 1980s and this stance does not seem to appear in any subsequent books.  In addition, he features a lesbian couple in a positive way in a story 'The Dream Archipelago' (1999) in a brilliant piece of writing which misleads the reader very well in regard of the characters' gender.  Whilst tolerance of same-sex couples does not always go hand-in-hand with having a multi-cultural perspective, it does seem to jar.  I do wonder if after 'Fugue for a Darkening Island' Priest's views on racial matters shifted or he simply realised that if he continued to peddle racist propaganda in his novels he would not get published (the Race Relations Act became law in 1976).  This novel is certainly an indelible stain on Priest's career and unfortunately cannot but detract from the strength of his other writing.

The novels of Priest's that I first came to were those which can be seen as clearly magic realism.  I bought 'A Dream of Wessex' (1977), 'The Glamour' (1981) and 'The Quiet Woman' (1990) all in the same imprint from a remaindered bookshop in Oxford in 1993.  These books have a very British feel about them and in many ways are 'gentle' books, not shaking you with brash ideas in the way that some of Priest's other novels, for example, 'The Inverted World' (1974) do. 

These stories are set at the eastern edge of South-West England, areas like Dorset and Wiltshire.  'The Quiet Woman' is really about a woman unravelling how a local man has been party to manipulating the media to hound political activists.  It is set in the near future when the region is suffering from the fall-out from a nuclear accident at one of France's numerous power stations., if not for that future setting it could have been a realist novel.  'A Dream of Wessex' is more clearly science fiction, featuring a group of people seeking to learn potential future developments for the UK by going into a computer simulation of the country in the near future.  The exact nature shifts depends on who is overseeing the project and it is interesting when the source of power for Wessex (which has become separated from the rest of England) is shifted from wave power to oil rigs off the south England coast when a new project director with less ecological attitudes comes in.   In this context which is clearly reminiscent of stories such as 'The Matrix' movies, there is a search for individuals and an attempt to reassert the 'better than real' nature of Wessex. 

Priest's sympathies for those fighting against individuals repressing political activism and ecologically sound approaches to power supply seem to suggest Priest is a liberal and this makes it hard to reconcile with his authorship of 'Fugue for a Darkening Island'.  There was clearly a lot of turbulence in Priest's political attitudes which does not seem to be revealed to the average reader.

As 'A Dream of Wessex' can be seen as a precursor of 'The Matrix' and 'The Quiet Woman' of 'Edge of Darkness' (1985), 'The Glamour' contributes much to contemporary vampire stories like the 'Twilight' and 'True Blood' series.  The special characters in 'The Glamour' are not vampires, but do have an ability to make themselves unseen by ordinary people.  Following an accident the protagonist becomes involved in an almost love triangle including a male of these different people.  Again, Priest is excellent at crafting the antagonist in a way that you know that whilst he does not engage in overt violence, you know your life would be shattered simply due to his whim, if you encountered him for real.  In a low key novel like this, the reality of that character and the almost raw strength of his nasty personality stand out all the stronger.  As in many of his stories, like 'The Extremes' (1998) and 'The Separation' (2002), and in his novelisation of David Cronenberg's screenplay for 'eXistenZ' (1999)  Priest plays around with the sequence of events and time and people's perceptions of them.

In terms of the chronology of Priest's writing I have jumped ahead.  His third novel was 'Inverted World' which whilst more clearly science fiction encompasses familiar traits of Priest's work in an interesting way.  The story features a rolling wooden city moving across the landscape, which actually turns out to be Spain.  The residents of the city see time and space differently to the way we do.  What they see about their 'world' of the city and the humans they encounter is shown from their perspective so making 'us' appear very alien.  Like much of Priest's work this questions our views of what is true when discussion (mis)perceptions. It is well written and like the best of Priest's writing submerges you in the 'reality' of the context and the characters and it deservedly won the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) award.  

Priest's next novel, 'The Space Machine' (1976) which I finished reading this June, plays a little with time and space with the protagonists taking the time machine from H.G. Wells's 'The Time Machine' (1895) but using it travel to Mars on the eve of the Martian invasion of Earth as portrayed in Wells's 'The War of the Worlds' (1898).  It is a more conventional action science fiction story, written as a pastiche of Wells's work.  Only the focus on the development of the male protagonist's lust and then love for his female counterpart and reference to their growing relationship betrays the fact that the novel was written in the 1970s when it seems it was compulsory to include such elements.  It is well paced and portrays both late Victorian London and Mars as suggested by Wells vividly and far less whimsically than 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II' (2002-3) which also presents a different perspective of the invasion.  Priest's novel is a good read that sweeps you along.  In many ways it can be considered an overlooked steampunk novel at a time when Moorcock with his 'Nomad of Time' series was also stimulating the seeding of this genre.  Priest has been vice president of the H.G. Wells Society since 2006; other vice-presidents have included: Brian Aldiss, Stephen Baxter, Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Foot.  I very much enjoy this novel and hope that Priest returns to steampunk writing.

One setting that forms the background for a number of Priest's stories, is the dream archiepelago.  The collection 'The Dream Archipelago' encompasses all the stories from an earlier collection 'An Infinite Summer' (1979).  It features a fictional archipelago which even to the characters may be a delusion or a fantasy.  This context is the setting for 'The Affirmation' (1981) in which the protagonist battles to decide whether he is the author or his own character in a novel set in the archipelago; it reminds me of the similar merging of author or character seen in the movie '2046' (2004) which with its distortion of time flow and perception fits well within the Priest-style exploration of worlds.  The premise of 'The Affirmation' is well handled, despite the seeming complexity of the set-up. 

Stories among those set in the Dream Archipelago context do stand out.  Again, the mundane nastiness that Priest does so well is noticeable, especially the consequences of misunderstanding local social customs and unspoken communication when at a funeral.  This motivated me to write 'The Wedding Party': http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/04/wedding-party-short-story.html in a feeble attempt to mimic Priest's story.  In 'The Affirmation' and 'The Dream Archipelago' Priest demonstrates that science fiction can be light touch and from that approach allow the crafting of acutely observed and portrayed characters and interactions.

After a relatively quiet period in his career in the 1980s when Priest produced movie novelisations as diverse as 'Short Circuit' (1986) and 'Mona Lisa' (1986), he steadily rose in public recognition in the 1990s and his output increased too. 'The Prestige' (1995) was the one book which brought Priest a higher level of recognition than any other because it was made into a movie, 'The Prestige' (2006).  The novel won a World Fantasy Award.  As with much of Priest's work, there is a grounding in very credible reality, rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians, but with the added fantastical element of electrical power seemingly allowing teleportation.  The movie adopts a different approach, though equally steampunk, in that it replicates whilst transporting so creating multiple versions of the magician rather than a single semi-copy as in the novel.  The rival who simply uses his twin brother and the difficulties that causes for their family lives, is carried between the two and in other author's hands would have been the extent of the story. 

With this novel, Priest moved from the 'near future' into a different time context, but brought with him his usual themes and because of his successful portrayal of harsh individuals was well suited for portraying the bitter rivalry and hard people of the time and business.  The characters in the movie were felt to be underwritten, but that the actors, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale lifted their roles above this.  Priest himself enjoyed the movie and saw the variations from his novel as innovative and exciting.  All credit to him for not adopting the Alan Moore approach to movie adaptations of his work!

'The Extremes' (1998) also won a BSFA award.  Like 'eXistenZ' and 'A Dream of Wessex' it features a protagonist going into a virtual reality to uncover truths about the 'real' world.  It features an American woman in Britain exploring events around her husband's death during a shooting spree in the USA by allowing her to 'go into' the event.  A friend of mine and I cannot agree whether ultimately the protagonist is transported back to that time and place or whether the virtual reality simply becomes her dominant reality.  Again it explores themes of reality and perceptions of it, but in a way which seems very contemporary both in terms of technology, the traumatic incident and the impact on those associated with it.  The US setting is a new departure for Priest, but I imagine was to address a potential American audience brought to his work by 'The Prestige'.

'The Separation' (2002) has counter-factual elements but also features discussion of what is 'real' and features a messing around in the sequence of events as seen in 'The Glamour'.  It features twin British brothers at the time of the Second World War who at a juncture experience different outcomes, one the war we experienced in our world and the other a world in which Britain made peace with Nazi Germany following the arrival of Rudolf Hess in Britain.  As with 'The Prestige' Priest shows good attention to period detail.  As with a number of his stories, there is no strong narrative thrust, but rather interesting speculation on how events would unfold in the different contexts leaving the reader to come to firm conclusions if they desire. This novel also won a BSFA award, Priest's third, and an Arthur C. Clark award too; 'The Prestige' and 'The Extremes' had both been nominated for this latter award when published.

It is difficult to find out biographical details about Priest, but he faded from my sight and that of the general public, I imagine, through the 2000s. Priest is now 68 so he may have been in semi-retirement. However, we are promised 'The Islanders' (2011) and 'The Adjacent' (2012).  Christopher Priest comes over as an erratic writer but one who has produced novels and short stories of recognised high quality.  Even in his 'quieter' novels, he produces acutely observed characters some of which that are almost so uncomfortable to read that you feel you have to set the story aside.  Yet, you are locked in by the ideas that he raises and toys with, giving answers though not easy ones and leaving much up to you as a reader to decide upon.  Consequently, his writing stays with you long after you have finished reading. 

For me, however, my enjoyment of such much of his writing and my true admiration of his skills notably in drawing characters and settings and stimulating thought, will be forever over-shadowed if not contaminated by a single novel, 'A Fugue for a Darkening Island'.  Whilst his political views seem complex and many of them liberal, to me this is one of the most aggressively racist books still in the mainstream and available freely to buy.  Its nastiness is heightened by contemporary debates about refugees, race, violence and the UK and that means it is a running sore on Priest's body of work, ripped open once again to spoil everything else which he has produced.  Despite all his good attributes, I can never forgive him for producing that foul book.

Are Authors Vampires of Others' Lives?

A couple of months back in 'The Guardian' newspaper and elsewhere there was commentary on how authors take revenge on people.  The latest in a long list (and foolishly I have lost the articles which have named historic examples), is Jonathan Franzen who in 'Freedom' passes a harsh comment on fellow author Ian McEwan's novel 'Atonement'.  I have found an article from 'The Independent' listing some others: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/poison-pens-the-art-of-literary-revenge-2107142.html  These include Alexander Pope in the eighteenth century ridiculing a love-rival and more recently novelist Jilly Cooper featuring a goat named after a critic of hers from twenty years earlier in her recent novel 'Jump' (2010).  Melvyn Bragg included a caricature of interviewer Lynn Barber in his 1992 novel 'Crystal Rooms' following an awkward interview between them two years earlier; Sebastian Faulks apparently caricatured reviewer D.J Taylor in his novel 'A Week in December' (2009) and Taylor did the same in return in his 'At the Chime of the City Clock' published this year.  There has been commentary that now rather than be subtle in doing it, especially to reviewers, authors simply send a harsh tweet such as Alison Flood and Alain de Botton last year.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am often frustrated that people are able to do bad things to me, especially to impugn me with impunity.  Though it is a painless form of revenge, I have got some recompense from treating versions of these people in bad ways in my writing, though I have kept those stories off this blog.  It can be unhealthy to focus your stories in this way if you let the revenge taking dominate, but it other ways it is useful.  The behaviour of these people is never unique to them and you can be sure that many of your readers will have met people who behave in the same foolish or nasty ways.  It also allows you to have a believable element to your 'villains' and for personal experience I know it can be very satisfying to feel that at least in one context, you have some revenge. 

I think the concept of Karma and of 'vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord' come about because most of us get no chance to get any come-back against those who treat us badly so our only compensation is that sometime in the future, probably when we are not around to witness those who do us bad will have to pay.  In fact, they probably never will, but that is hard for us to accept.  This world, especially UK society today is unfair.  We live in the time that the rich and privileged benefit at the expense of the rest of us.  The bad are winning out with little chance for the good people to regain anything; just look how badly nurses and the elderly who have given their all, suffer. These days so many people are self-centred, and even worse, self-righteous with it, meaning that not only can they not see the perspective of anyone else they also feel that you are wrong not to totally accept their personal viewpoint of how the world should be.  In particular they love you to 'recant' outlining in detail and length how wrong you have been.  In such circumstances, to retain any self-respect, we either need faith in divine or natural justice or to find a safe way to take revenge.

Taking revenge in the fiction you write is an explicit way of drawing real people into your writing, often the one that people look out for.  However, it is not that uncommon a process, it happens constantly in all fiction.  Whilst we may conjure up exotic and alien characters, the bulk of how we portray them is based on the accumulation of what the author has seen of real people or read about them in others' books whether fiction or non-fiction or seen in other media, notably these days, movies.  All of these sources give us a sense of how people behave.  A friend of mine, himself a non-fiction writer, accused me of stealing people's lives to use in my writing.  His accusation was that he was more honest in his use of the lives of others often for legal reasons, compelled to gain his subjects' approval before writing about them.  He felt I was exploitative and devious in using people, often many more than he did, without seeking their approval first.

Given that I am not a prolific author, nor a successful one, I seem to get more than my fair share of people telling me how I should write and criticising me for now doing it the way they feel is not only advisable but necessary.  Back in 2008 I commented on the other friend who complained if I wrote about anything I had not directly experienced and certainly from the perspective of any character who was of a different age, gender or ethnicity than myself.  See: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/06/authors-writing-and-internet.html  I know there were critiques in the 1970s of writing the history of a culture that was not your own leading to the development of what came to be known as 'subaltern history', i.e. the history of peoples ruled over by others written by descendants just of those people.  Personally I welcome histories from every perspective.  I would also be careful in drawing such lines and saying that particular perspectives are somehow 'better'.  I am a descendant of my grandfather, one among many, but who is to say that I understand his life or could write his history any better than say an anthropologist from India who had made a particular study of white, skilled working class men living in North London in the mid-20th century?  I see legitimacy not only in anyone's story but in anyone's telling of anyone else's story.  This may be controversial, but I fear that unless we have a broad view on what is 'permissible' in writing and other media, we will choke off so much good (and bad) art.  Should Ang Lee have been barred from directing 'Sense and Sensibility' (1995), David Cronenberg from directing 'Eastern Promises' (2007); should Sebastian Faulks have been blocked from writing many of his novels, because he is not French; should Nicole Jordan be barred from writing historical romance because she lives in the 21st century not the 18th; should Anne Rice be blocked from writing about vampires because she is not one?  We certainly would have no 'Watership Down' (1972) until a rabbit could operate a wordprocessor and 'Star Wars' could never had been legitimately produced in this galaxy under such regulations.

Authors draw on everything that interests them, everything they see, hear, touch, taste and smell.  They draw on other writers' stories, but above all they draw on human life.  Authors are human, they are flawed.  They fill their books with assumptions and prejudices as everyone else does.  Of course, we would spurn those fuelling hatred in what they write, but it is important to understand why they write it not simply say everything should be censored.  Humans are constant story tellers, diarists even lie to their diaries, but everything that is written, in particular for novels, draws on an author's take on the world and the people they meet in it.  There is exploitation, but fiction authors do not somehow drain away the souls of the people they feature in their stories.  As it is, most often, even when historical or contemporary characters appear under their own names, they are presented as the author sees them, not as they or their loved ones might see them.  However, saying that, how different do people appear in different biographies of them?  Even those trying to adhere to non-fiction, cannot but help putting elements of themselves and their perspectives into their books, if simply by choosing what to include.

Perhaps I have been more challenged about the intellectual basis of my fiction writing than the average amateur author is.  I imagine that the many tens of thousands of people writing fiction in their homes possibly at their very moment have to justify how they go about conjuring up the tens, the hundreds of fictional characters they create in the way that I have done.  Perhaps I have been apologetic for too long and should be more assertive that like every other author, I will take fragments, some large, some small from dozens of people I meet and will then blend them together into my characters.  Sometimes, yes, like the authors seeking revenge, I will bring almost an entire person into my writing, but I trust that my humanity means I only do it in retribution and my use of them will be minor compared to the distress they have inflicted on me.  In particular, I am no bestseller, no Booker prize winner, so my revenges (and there have been very few) will have a very limited audience.  However, even if the audience is simply me, it helps my state of mind to get a little bit back from being treated unjustly.  Perhaps authors are vampires, but like vampires, in most cases we only tend to take a little from each person and it is what sustains us in what we do.

Publishing On Demand: Sales the Only Quality Control?

I have a feeling that there are going to be fewer postings on this blog in 2009 than in the past. Though, if, as I anticipate, I lose my job in August and my house in December (possibly sooner) then I will have a lot more to write about the difficulties of finding work and renting again after reposession. The newspapers are jammed with information about collapse and especially unemployment. Having lived through the 1980s, the one thing I must say is that at least the government is making some efforts to ameliorate the situation with schemes for the unemployed, especially the young who are over-represented and trying to kick the banks into freeing up credit flows. In the 1980s, the government did nothing except worsen the situation, such as by shutting down the coal industry. We were told it was 'necessary' and that to complain about it we were naive or foolish and if we were out of work we were lazy. Of course the people saying that were in good jobs and saw their salaries rise. I do not think the government will achieve much in countering what is a global problem but at least this time we will not be made to feel guilty for the foolish policies of bankers and/or the government. I just wish the woman in my house, like many others would refuse to discuss it. She complained last year that I was overly gloomy when I simply predicted a slight fall in house prices and now when things are many times worse than I said they would be she still complains that I should not discuss the impact on this household. Effectively I need to move to the Midlands where there is work in my field and hanging on while my company sheds more and more jobs is short-sighted and will lead to more upheaval in the end.

Anyway, this was not meant to be a posting about the economy, you can find enough about that at present at every turn. Instead I was going to look at a trend which anyone who has been interested in writing fiction will have been aware for the past few years: publishing on demand. Living in Milton Keynes it was a trend that was apparent locally because we had a big Amazon warehouse near us and the online booksellers Amazon, is the major outlet for published-on-demand books. Now, I am not really certain what the difference between published-on-demand and vanity-published books is. Someone I know who is about to publish-on-demand recently condemned another author had had published that way as simply spent on vanity publishing, so it seems that even authors operating in this field are uncertain about the boundaries.

Vanity publishing was around certainly throughout the 20th century and probably for much of the 19th century. You paid a fee to a disreputable publisher, equivalent to some thousands of pounds these days and they told you your novel was wonderful and published it, but did nothing to market it or promote it. To some extent with the cost of promotion and the uncertainty of sales, many mainstream publishers have sort of moved in this direction anyway. They would not charge you a fee, but if they accept your book as being worthwhile publishing, they will do that but then leave most of the marketing and selling up to you. They do take the risk of publishing the books but reduce their overheads by adopting this approach. To some extent it fits the standard publisher's view that the author sells their book rather than the book selling the book. Intriguing authors can make sales of poor quality books and boring, mudane authors will bring down the sales of even the best written or interesting book. Having publication by a proper publisher, however, for you as an author is nice, because you feel that your book has been approved on the basis of quality. In addition you have not had to pay the vanity publishers' fees, but, even so, your book may rarely appear in any bookshop and its sales may be very low.

Technology shifted the balance in the 2000s. With the computerisation of printing it was possible to simply run off a single copy of a book rather than spend time and effort resetting the printing presses for each one. It did mean that unit costs do not fall the more you print, it costs the same per unit if you print one or ten thousand, but it did allow publishers, and increasingly authors to match supply more closely to demand rather than filling up those remaindered bookshops which still seem to be present in every town with unsold stock. I suppose it is better for the environment too. Perhaps, also, publishers will be willing to take more risk and publish books from different genres that are less mainstream, less worried that they will be left with loads of unsold books if a gamble does not pay off.

With publishers expecting authors to do more of (or entirely) their own marketing, some authors have moved towards a much more direct connection between themselves and their reader/buyer. Back in the early 2000s I attended a talk by a man who had retired early and had gone on various travels around the World, increasingly sponsored for charity and he had begun writing up his exploits as books. He had paid to have these published-on-demand and what he was doing was going around the UK to individual bookshops and offering to signings and talks. There he would take orders and then telephone his publisher and run off just as many books as he needed. He of course had a few samples with him and he would pay a fee to the bookshop for hosting him. He also spoke at other venues like writers' groups, book groups, womens' groups, etc. which had lower overheads for him. In return they got an entertaining speaker. Now, obviously not all of us can tramp around the country selling our books in this way, but it is the path for some. The way more people can do it is via the internet. It is not difficult to have a website set up to sell your books. You can even simply sell them through eBay if you like. There are overheads but they are comparatively small and no doubt you will soon get a feel for if your book is going to sell.

The relationship with publish-on-demand publisher is not free. You pay a fee but usually of only a few hundreds of pounds, well below the old vanity rates. In addition, the more you are willing to do yourself, such as typeset and design the book cover, the cheaper the rate is. The best thing, though, is to make sure you get a page on Amazon because they you become open to the global, English-speaking market. Of course you may never sell thousands, but for the average author even knowing one hundred people have bought their book and are most likely reading it, is a huge step forward from just having it read by friends and family. Of course, you do not even have to have a paper copy, I came across a woman who writes Jane Austen pastiches, who just sells e-books of them off her website. Now, presumably there is sufficient demand otherwise she would not have kept bothering. She still seems to be there even seven years since I first ran across her.

The issue that arises is about quality. Getting a book published in the traditional way you first had to attract the attention of an agent because publishers hate getting books sent directly too them. Getting an agent could be difficult especially if you were writing in a genre which was not mainstream. Then your agent had to find a publisher who would read it and even the best agents were not 100% successful in doing this even for good authors. Then the publisher had to approve your book and move ahead to publishing it. All of this could take time. There was an assumption that poor quality books would not get through, though we all know that that is not the case. Think about all the 'bonk busters', 'shopping novels', 'airport thrillers', celebrity 'auto'-biographies that get produced and sold in large numbers. In particular, influential people often write books whether fiction or non-fiction that get published with little concern for quality and anyone, like me, who has been involved in writers' groups know there are tens of authors in each county who write excellent stuff that will never be published. However, with publish-on-demand there is no quality control. Anyone who can pay to have their novel published in this way will get it out there, and this is why I feel there remain overlaps with vanity publishing.

The one element of quality control of publish-on-demand books is customer demand. If no-one buys the book, none will be printed and presumably no-one will be waiting for the author's next book. The worst of it will be that it is held in some Kb on a computer somewhere until author or publisher decides to delete it. You can argue that publishing on demand is truly democratic publishing. However, this neglects the issue about how people find out about the books in the first place. I was asked by a friend of a friend how he could publicise his gothic-style contemporary thriller more effectively. It had been published by a proper publishers, not on demand, it had its Amazon page but people were oblivious to it. He might as well have published-on-demand and had to get out there and sell it himself. So, there is a need for the kind of publicity that publishers can give. Perhaps blogging can fill in part of this role. Back in July 2009 I followed a link to the 'Eve's Alexandria' blog: http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/ which is a blog book reviews by this Eve. I read very slowly, it takes me about three months to get through the average novel, otherwise I would be tempted to have a blog which reviewed publish-on-demand novels.

Quality control by sales can be seen as a way for good books to come to the fore, if only over a long period of time, and assuming they can get equal exposure. Of course, people writing for a particular genre, might simply want sales to a particular audience, such as Goths, and for them that is sufficient. I was interested in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition. Last year they had 5000 entries and these were whittled down to 800 from which excerpts were exposed to public vote on a regional basis. I contributed my views on a few, but was severely put off when it came to the final 10. They seemed to be the most blandest of the bland novels and I refused to comment on them thinking of the much better ones which had fallen by the wayside. Perhaps I am out of step with current trends in contemporary novels, but I did despair that the repeated distilling of novels from local, regional and national levels simply left us with the least offensive, but also the least engaging examples that had been produced. When they emailed me to see if I would comment on any novels in this year's competition, I simply ignored it, feeling there was no point in me contributing as the things I felt that were of the poorest quality will always win.

Perhaps being too democratic leads simply to sameness and we need an eclectic mix to creep in around the sides, and maybe published-on-demand novels provide that. Given my Gothic tastes I am much more likely to see novels that interest and even, dare I say it, excite me coming through the more informal route (though I acknowledge that the cost in itself is a filter keeping back a lot of the kinds of people who would be interested in Gothic fiction). Such 'leaking in' benefits the mainstream too. I do not know the total sales for the novel 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' by Louis De Bernieres but it sold over 420,000 copies on Amazon alone and was made into a Hollywood movie in 2001 (which he disliked, but I feel has a far more feasible, though more romantic, ending than the book). I would challenge you to name another of De Bernieres's novels, though he has written six, the first in 1990, and short stories too. 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' was first published in 1993 but it took over two years before there were any significant sales, and then it exploded. The reason for this was recommendation through word-of-mouth rather than any sophisticated marketing approach. To some extent his example has encouraged 'viral advertising' of new books and television programmes, though this does not always work the way people hope/expect.

So, not shaking off my concerns about quality control of publish-on-demand novels, I can see they are a way to get a wider variety of writing of all sorts of quality, some really excellent, out into the marketplace. I am optimistic that there will be quality control via sales, and if people want to pay to read poor quality novels, then I guess that it is their money.

If I had not had such a tough time financially (the capital gains tax was finally settled yesterday!!!) I might have been tempted to go down the path of publishing-on-demand. However, I now know that it would be an utter waste of time. I have been running this blog since May 2007 and it has some of my best writing on it, but not a single one of my novels has attracted a single comment. Clearly there is absolutely no demand for my writing. The novel I put on Gothic Steampunk Phantastic was read by 114 people in a year and that was probably because it was free. Perhaps authors thinking of publishing-on-demand should do what I have done, first, and test the water. If, like me, you generate not an iota of interest, instead spend the money on a decent graphics package, make up your own book cover and simply put a copy on your shelf where it will get the most appreciative audience.

P.P. 24/01/2009 - If you ever had any hope of being published except by paying for it yourself, something I read in 'The Guardian' today will douse that belief. Apparently, Harper Collins, just one of numerous publishers in the UK receives 1000 (one thousand) unsolicited novels every month. On top of this must be added the ones which they commission or come through agents. Publishers refer to where most of these novels end up as the 'slush pile'. Uniquely Harper Collins has introduced a rolling system a little like the Amazon breakthrough voting system, i.e. they allow authors to upload the novels on to a section called Authonomy. Apparently it already has 12,000 subscribers who read and rate the novels. Clearly if you are short of cash and want to get fiction for free or want to pass the time at your PC it is a good place to go. Some novels rise to prominence by being voted on by readers and Harper Collins has now given contracts to three that reached the top. While it is good that these authors received prominence, you do wonder about the quality. I anticipate that the same factors will prevail as with the Amazon competition and innovative novels will sink without trace and the most bland will float to the top. Interestingly, one that has succeeded actually has already been self-published, but the author uploaded it to Authonomy to get a better profile. Knowing the level of competition that I face has made me abandon hope of ever being published. Here is likely the only place you will ever see my fiction and given the lack of response, no-one out there is interested in it anyway.

Authors, Writing and the Internet

As you know, I enjoy writing fiction, some of it I show off here. The other resident of my house similarly writes, though neither of us really discusses our writing in more than general terms. Late into the night, single lights are left shining over a glowing computer as we hammer out our latest work. I have a problem that when I leave my office I often find the house in utter darkness and fumble around trying to find the light switch which is at the far end of the corridor outside my office, wired in by people who clearly did not write late into the night or, maybe, carried torches. I have been writing since I was a child. I used to always get good marks in my creative writing lessons and it seemed to help me in my exams. I have done reasonably well in a few competitions, but I am not one of these people who enters loads of things. Given that so many people write now, I have no hope of being noticed. There is a computer in almost every house and we can all hammer away to write our stories. I suppose we all dream of being like J.K. Rowling, because, with so many chances to get on and escape our lives being closed off, writing a bestseller remains one way out.

The scale of how much fiction writing is going on in the UK nowadays was revealed by a friend of mine. She had entered a novel-writing competition run by Amazon. They had 34,000 entries; my friend got through to the 'short list' of 5000 novels. These were judged for the first two phases on a regional basis, with members of the public writing their reviews of novels put forward. I reviewed a couple, of course like most people, including my friend's. There was a final 10 novels but I stopped at that stage because they were almost all the same, and incredibly bland at that. The process showed me that such a public vote on writing leads to a kind of homeopathic procedure and you end up boiling down anything to interest to the blandest least offensive novels.  Even Richard & Judy, the UK's self-appointed promoters of literary taste (and however you might dislike them, they have done a great deal for promoting writing in the UK) make often less easy choices and certainly less bland choices for their recommendations.  Their novel-writing competition of a few years ago had 49,000 entries.

Perhaps universal democracy in selecting novels is flawed, we need things that challenge the reader rather than are simply mush. It seemed to be the same issue that has been highlighted by the most anodyne of British broadcasting, the 'Book at Bedtime' on Radio 4 in which a current novel is read each evening. There have been complaints that the last two have been too challenging and bleak. It seems we want to be wrapped in cotton wool in even our book choices these days, but, unfortunately, that way leads to the death of literary culture. Even J.K. Rowling whose work is heavily rooted in the public-school novel traditions, breaks away at times and writes maturely for young people, and, at a length (around 700-800 pages), that many adults would shy away from.


I go through phases of writing short fiction, novella length and then novel length and often then go back again. I like to get my details in my novels precise, whether they have a current or a historical setting. I bought a book in the 1990s (I thought) about writing fiction. However, within the first chapter it said there was no point an 'amateur' writing fiction as they could never do a sufficient level of research to produce a novel that would not be picked to pieces by readers. Instead, the book advised, 'amateur' people (and surely all authors are amateurs until they are published, I guess unless they are journalists first) to stick to writing non-fiction books about their hobbies or local areas.

Of course, this was utter rubbish. For a start, readers are tolerant of 'errors', especially if they pander to what they think is the correct fact (it is often harder to feature the truth in a novel than what is the accepted truth). Even Ian Fleming made blunders about certain guns and holsters and things like that, and yet, none of his books seem to have been out of print in the whole of my lifetime. The other thing is that people often start writing fiction about what they know, their town or their job, and this allows them and others to have confidence, and from this, they build into being an author on broader issues.

A friend of mine always complained because I wrote stories about women or people from different cultures, that she felt I could not know anything about. I said, well it would be very tedious if all I produced were stories about a man in his thirties, working in an office and living in East London. Writing is about escapism, after all. I think we should take on the challenge of writing as different people. We can never have been all the people in any story, so we always have to look through the eyes of others. This perception we gain from observing and reading ourselves.  I used to set myself the task while sitting on London Underground trains, of describing, in my mind, the people sitting opposite me and I still find my descriptions of people are often stimulated by pictures I see. In fact, these days, for my stories, often I do not make up people or their clothing, I simply describe ones I find by surfing the internet.

For people who worry that they do not know enough about the world and the views of others, I always recommend that they start writing science fiction or fantasy novels, because then you are free to create the whole world and it does not matter if ice is lighter than water or not, or that a certain gun is of a particular calibre, or a town is not in a certain place - it does not matter, you decide all of those things for your world. When writing, it is astounding how quickly the fictional 'universe' takes on a logic of its own. Even in a contemporary piece, well-established characters quickly give momentum to the story in how they act and will be expect to act or respond to any situation.


The internet has revolutionised fiction writing. When I was writing in the 1980s and 1990s, I would spend hours pouring over factual books getting details especially for my stories set in 1920s Munich. I would have to get maps and lists of names appropriate for the time. I would have to read up on appropriate cars and clothing and weaponry (these were murder mysteries) and assemble them in a huge file. Now I can research as I write. If I want to describe a house in the Bavarian Alps, with some Googling I can find half-a-dozen pictures of them in minutes. If I want to find the distance between two towns, I use the AA website and get it in seconds.

Maybe this is why writing novels has become so popular, it is so much easier now to get accurate information quickly. I must say you do find, though, that sometimes you keep running up against identical resources, the same essays repeated again and again, sometimes simply translated into another language, but saying the same thing. This can be frustrating as you cannot push on beyond that level of knowledge about something. However, this has always been a problem for authors, even 'professional' ones. They have no greater ability to acquire knowledge than you or I do. The internet has democratised a reasonable level of knowledge and certainly can give you more than enough accurate data to produce credible stories.

The minutiae you can tap into is astounding. As in the past, authors benefit from the painstaking of people interested in individual towns or particular foods or trains or ferries or guns or police forces or whatever and writing about these things as a resource that fiction writers can also tap into. Just remember not to choke off your narrative with too much detail so the story drowns in it.  Few readers are fans of Cubist writing.  If you include too much detail you end up with something like 'The Mezzanine' by Nicholson Baker (1989) which is a novel entirely about one man's travel up an escalator during his lunch break and covers only a matter of seconds in time! Detail is good, we can get lots of it easily now, but, as Ian Fleming showed, it should not get in the way of a good story.

Encountering Minor Celebrities

I guess my mind must be overly active at the moment and seemingly has a need to dump out all these quirky things that have been floating around in it for many years, like the Aeneid-Jimmy Ruffin parallels posting. Over the years I have 'encountered' quite a few minor celebrities, people from television and movies and some politicians. Generally I never talk to them but typically am in the same space as them for a while and get to see the extent to which they are or are not like how they appear on television and to some extent how much they look like ordinary people. Of course, often they are trying to appear like ordinary people anyway. I am not one of these people who runs up and asks for autographs or even engages the person in conversation, but I suppose I cannot shake off my curiosity with celebrities as people rather than as celebrities. Yet, it is the fact of them being celebrities that marks them out to my attention among the mass of other people I pass. This is just a list of those people I have encountered who could be called celebrities and an explanation of where I met them. The when is generally more vague, but I will give it a shot.


My earliest memory of encountering a celebrity is of seeing Richard Beckinsale (1947-79) with his daughter Samantha Beckinsale (born 1966). He was famous for appearing in the sitcoms 'Porridge' and 'Rising Damp' and she would later appear in various less successful sitcoms and in the firefighter drama 'London's Burning'. I remember a girl in our group (we were standing at the entrance to Woking swimming pool built in 1973) running to get his autograph. Until recently I assumed it was Kate Beckinsale (born 1973), Samantha's half-sister I had seen, but I now know she would have been too young.

In 1979 I stood next to Michael Foot (born 1913) [died 2010] in a public toilet in Guildford in Surrey. He was a Labour MP at the time and became leader of the Labour Party 1980-83. I ran into him again in the late 1990s in Bloomsbury and again on Charing Cross Road. Other politicians I went on to meet included Edward Heath (1916-2005) the former Conservative Prime Minister in Stepney in 1995 (he was an absolutely huge man physically), James Callaghan (1912-2005) former Labour Prime Minister in Bloomsbury in 1996. Tony Banks (1943-2006), Labour MP for Stratford, in Mile End, just down the road from his constituency. Tony Benn (born 1925) [Died 2014] I met in Mile End in the mid-1990s and in Bedford in the mid-2000s (he comes over as an incredibly honest man and has a supportive interest in everyone who talks to him, especially children). William Waldegrave (born 1946) a former Conservative minister 1990-7 once sat down next to me in a cafe in London. He came across far less of the silly public schoolboy he appeared in the media at the time and I discussed his policies to grant easier access to government documents, which he had done in the early 1990s. I am not certain of the date but it was sometime between 1995-8, I guess after 1997 when he was out of office and free to sit in cafes.

I also met Alan Clark (1928-99), a Conservative MP renowned for his sexual exploits, driving a Citroen DS and being a diarist. He was very tall and like myself had gone to the wrong venue to hear his talk, probably in 1996-7, we were both in Mile End and were supposed to be in Bloomsbury. I went there by tube, he by car and I got there ahead of him to tell the assembled audience that he was on his way. He was a character probably 200 years too late, you could really have seen him as a Georgian rake. At the other end of the spectrum, though with a similar rather rogueish demeanour was George Galloway (born 1954), former controversial Labour MP and then MP for the Respect Party. I met him in 2003 in Shepherd's Bush around the time of the Iraq War. He comes across rather light-hearted and was a fool to appear on the 'Big Brother' series, but in real life you detect his sincerity and the passion of his beliefs. This came out strongly when he saw down that US committee that was effectively putting him on trial, but probably because the media dislike him, this serious side is minimised when you see him in the media, but comes out immediately when you meet the man face-to-face. I sat at the table in a restaurant next to Chancellor Helmut Kohl (born 1930) [Died 2017] in 1985 in Bad Hersfeld in West Germany, he was helping an elderly woman, maybe a relative, with her lunch. Kohl, of course, was as huge as he appears on the television, rather dwarfing the small restaurant.

It was in a cafe, in Hampstead this time, that I met Sylvester McCoy (born 1943; real name I found out was Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith) who is probably most renowned for being the 7th Doctor Who in the long-running series. He looked smaller than on the television and seemed very pensive so I did not disturb him. I had almost run over the 5th Doctor Who, Peter Davison (born 1951) also famous for his role as Tristan Farnon in 'All Creatures Great and Small' in the 1970s. He was also in 'Campion' in the late 1980s and has had a second wind appearing as 'The Last Detective' and 'At Home with the Braithwaites' in the 2000s. He stepped out right in front of me whilst I was cycling through Woking (where he lived in his youth) in about 1984. I encountered the 6th Doctor Who, Colin Baker (born 1943) in Blackpool last October which I suppose is suitable because that is where the Doctor Who museum is housed. I have also spoken with Sophie Aldred (born 1962) who played the 7th Doctor's assistant Ace; she looks about 15 years younger than she actually is, incredibly well preserved, and at the same time saw Kenny Baker (born 1934) [Died 2016] the man who was inside R2D2 in the 'Star Wars' movies, he too looks far younger than 74.


Before I get ahead of myself another British actor who stepped out in front of my bicycle was Nigel Havers (born 1949); this was in Oxford in 1992-3. He is a quintessential British actor as shown in series like 'A Horseman Riding By' and 'The Gentleman Thief', I liked him in 'Sleepers' (1991) in which he played a Soviet agent facing up to the end of the Cold War. Also known from being in the movies 'Chariots of Fire' (1981) and 'A Passage to India' (1984) and 'Empire of the Sun' (1987). Slightly further up the same road on another occasion while cycling, I came across the author Michael Moorcock (born 1939), someone I really admire, who, I think, had just emerged from a restaurant. In Oxford, on the station in fact, in about 1993 I met Freddie Jones (born 1927) [Died 2019], a British actor who has been appearing in movies and television series since the late 1960s and internationally is probably best known for 'Firefox' (1982), 'Dune' (1984) and 'Wild At Heart' (1990); he played The Earl in the 'Neverwhere' series (1996). In 1993 he appeared in the Jeremy Brett fronted series 'The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes' in the story called 'The Last Vampyre'. He had appeared earlier in the same series at the stage of 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' in a story called 'Wisteria Lodge' so was the only actor to appear in more than one role in the series.


Some areas, especially in London, are good for meeting minor celebrities. A television actress I also encountered in Hampstead, was Samantha Janus (born 1972). She seems to have not been out of work at all in the 2000s appearing in numerous drama series and most latterly in the soap opera 'Eastenders'. She looked identical to how she appears on television. In almost exactly the same place, on another occasion, I encountered Stephen Greif (born 1944) who though born in Hertfordshire and his ancestors were from Hungary, Poland and Lithuania has often portrayed people of Mediterranean background [P.P. he recently played a French UN negotiator in 'Spooks']. He has been appearing on stage and television since 1970 and seems to be constantly working. His deep, rich voice has meant work in adverts and voiceovers and I came to know his voice well through playing 'Medieval Total War' and 'Medieval II Total War' as he has a suitable voice for medieval characters especially the Italian and Greek factions. Also in Hampstead I encountered Peter Barkworth (1929-2006) there in about 1999, unsurprising as I was standing outside his house having it pointed out as part of a walking tour of the area I was part of at the time.  He happened to come out of this front door to find a group of us there.  He appeared in various television series such as 'Telford's Change' in the mid-1980s but I remember him best as one of the British traitors in 'Where Eagles Dare' (1968).


Another area is Kew. Here I met local resident Ray Brooks (born 1939) who featured prominently in my youth as the narrator of the children's series 'Mr. Benn' and in the movie in the Doctor Who film 'Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD' (1966), his role in that movie as David a resistance leader was a role I aspired to in my youth. He was in numerous television series in the 1960s right up to the 2000s, having left 'Eastenders' this year. His greatest television success was in 'Big Deal' (1984-6) in which he starred. I also encountered Oliver Ford Davis (born 1939) who has been appearing in television series since 1972 (including 'A Very British Coup') and is probably best known for 'Kavanagh QC' (1995-9) and appearing in 'Star Wars - The Phantom Menace' (1999); 'Star Wars - Attack of the Clones' (2002) and 'Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith' (2005). Again he looked just as he does on the movies.

Before I forget, another minor celebrity I ran into in Woking, Surrey, was Buster Merryfield most renowned for being Uncle Albert (1920-99) in the decade-spanning comedy series 'Only Fools and Horses', this was sometime probably 1983 (in fact it must have been much later as he only joined the series in 1984, but it could not have been later than 1987 that I saw him) when he was at the height of his success. Not far from there, in Weybridge, I met Bernard Cribbins (born 1928) [Died 2022] on a stall at a fete. He used to do adverts for the local fishing tackle shop on the radio in that area too. Cribbins has been working in the media since 1960 appearing in numerous movies, including 'Casino Royale' (1967), 'The Mouse on the Moon' (1962), with Peter Sellers in 'Two Way Stretch' (1960) and a couple of the Carry On movies. Notably he was also in 'Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD' alongside Ray Brooks. Cribbins returned to 'Doctor Who' appearing as Donna's grandfather in the 2007/08 season of the series. It would be interesting to also have Brooks back for an episode or two. In the television version of the Dalek Invasion story, the Doctor's granddaughter who was in her late teens stays on Earth in 2150 with the resistance leader. In the movie version she was only a small girl and goes off with her grandfather instead. Given recent references in the recent series to the Doctor's partner and creating a daughter, perhaps returning to visit his granddaughter would be an interesting twist.

London pubs can also be good locations for encountering celebrities if you get the right ones. I encountered Richard Harris (1930-2002) in a pub on the Mall the name of which I have forgotten, this must have been 1998. He was surrounded by young men no doubt in awe of his larger than life and drinking character. Harris had been a singer in the 1960s and 1970s and in movies since the 1950s, latterly best known for being Dumbledore in 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' (2002). Also in the late 1990s I encountered Ewan McGregor (born 1971) and John Hannah (born 1962) together in an argument with a member of the public in 'The French House' in Soho. McGregor is famous for 'Trainspotting' (1995), 'Moulin Rouge' (2001), the Star Wars movies mentioned above and riding his motorbike all over the world; John Hannah for 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994), 'The Mummy' movies and playing Inspector Rebus on television.

In Heal's the interior design store on Tottenham Court Road, I came across Marc Warren (born 1967), best known for his role in 'Hustle' (2004-) [ran until 2012] but was also in a particular episode of  'Doctor Who' in 2006 and was Mr. Teatime in the television adaptation of Terry Pratchett's 'Hogfather' (2006).  He seemed to be looking at beds.  Not far from there I met Ken Campbell (1941-2008), distinctive actor, playwright and comedian, walking down Charing Cross Road, not too surprising as he was appearing in a play there, probably his History of Comedy which was on in 2003. He was very much as he appeared on television, really full of life. A few streets from there on another occasion I think about 1998, Peter Stringfellow (born 1941), the nightclub owner and minor celebrity who still dresses and has the weird California beach haircut that he has long sported, as if he had been frozen in time as a minor 1980s pop singer. He looked as over-the-top grinning as he does on television. I must say he does seem genuinely happy with life, that aspect did not seem artificial. As he emerged alone, however, without any entourage, it did seem as if he had stepped through the wrong door on the way back from the toilet and had found himself inadvertently on the street rather than somewhere else in the building.

On trains out of Euston station I encountered Terry Christian (born 1963) one-time infamous television presenter of youth programme 'The Word' and now a radio presenter, he looked very well preserved, and given this was the early 2000s not much different to a decade before. At the same station catching the same train on another day I encountered Richard Griffiths (born 1947) [Died 2013] who was famously in 'Withnail and I' (1987) and has been in all but one of the Harry Potter films as Harry Potter's uncle, and had a successful television series in which he was the star, 'Pie in the Sky' (1994-7); he looked terribly sad which was a shame.


On aeroplanes in 1985 I encountered pop group 'The Christians' flying to the Netherlands and in 2004 'Right Said Fred' flying to Berlin. I also walked beside Robert Smith (born 1959) of 'The Cure' in Belgium in the early 2000s. He was another person who is actually huge in all directions when you meet him in real life. His big hair adds to that. I ran into Victoria Beckham (born 1974) of The Spice Girls with her husband David Beckham (born 1975 - footballer) at Victoria railway station in about 1997 on a day when David was bunking training. They were the celebrities who most looked like celebrities with a ring of men in dark coats around them it was as if they had carved out a bit of the air and made it their private zone. This is in sharp contrast to the others I have mentioned who were all generally approachable and certainly seemed to be going about their business. Aside from David Beckham the only other sports person I encountered was Duncan Goodhew (born 1957), the British Olympic swimmer, who was next to me in a tube train carriage going through Angel, Islington.


There are a couple of authors, Mike Phillips I admire his thrillers set in London, I met him in 1991 in Norwich along with actor Brian Bovell (born 1959) who appeared in the dramatisation of Phillips's 'Blood Rights' (book 1989; drama 1990) and in 'Prospects' (1986) and loads of television series latterly 'The Bill' and 'Hollyoaks'. Both were unassuming men you could chat with easily and have a beer with. Jeff Noon (born 1957) author of British kind of cyberpunk/surreal novels I met in a London bookshop in the early 2000s. He was far more craggy than I expected but interesting to talk to and with a real glint of excitement of ideas in his eyes. Kim Stanley Robinson (born 1952), science fiction author, I met him in Milton Keynes (the branch of Ottakar's there is the best in the country for meeting authors) in 2002 promoting 'Years of Rice and Salt' an epic counter-factual novel about if more people were killed by the Black Death of the 14th century. Again very down to earth and interested in the people talking to him and alert to their knowledge.

I met Andrew Roberts (born 1963) the Conservative historian and author in 1994 and again about five years later. He is much smaller than he appears on the television. He seems to have an addiction to twiglets. Despite his political leanings, he is interesting to talk to, his manner would seem fitted better to the world of Winston Churchill who he has written about. He does find counter-factuals interesting and we had a discussion about where a ghetto would have been located in London if the Germans had invaded Britain in 1940/1, given at the time we were in the East End which had had a large Jewish population at the time. I also met Mark Thomas (born 1963) last year in Southampton, he is a comedian, author and increasingly a political activist. He has good things to say about Goths which is excellent and is really sincere and a relaxed guy to talk to and very funny, a unique man.


I encountered Queen Elizabeth II (born 1925) [Died 2022] twice on the same day in 1992 by accident as she was visiting Oxford and I went to the railway station to buy a ticket and she was arriving there and passed in arm's reach of me, and then I cycled back across town and she went through the complex traffic system so I was stopped outside Christchurch college and she went passed me again bestowing another wave and smile on me.


Other people who are not celebrities but I felt honoured to meet were the head of the British Red Cross who sat down next to me on a coach to Lincoln again in the late 1990s and a former paratrooper on a train to Euston who had been dropped on Sicily and at Arnhem as part of Operation Market Garden and had survived. I could have talked to him for days. I also met a man who had run with Sir Roger Bannister when he broke the four-minute mile in Oxford in 1954, that was in Oxford. I also met a man who had been captured in Hong Kong in 1941 and had spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp, but then had worked for 20 years in Japan. He really showed me what forgiveness was, and also, he pointed out, that you cannot blame a whole people for the atrocities of their leaders and their military; within any population there are good people. In 1996 in Whitechapel I also met three German men who had fought in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. These people were all both ordinary and incredible at the same time and on reflection I would trade meeting a thousand celebrities for meeting such people.


For someone who is not a celebrity-seeker I do seem to run into quite a few. I imagine certainly now I have left London and even Milton Keynes that it will occur less. In my experience, most celebrities are pretty ordinary, usually smart and well turned out, either much older than you expect or exactly the same as you expect their appearance to be. Maybe celebrity in itself is a preserver or maybe they can just afford to buy products that keep them looking good. I am certainly stunned to have found Sophie Aldred is five years older than me, I imagined her far younger from her appearance.