Blog

Rehearsing my favourite ‘Rockley Firs’ for upcoming performance of folk operetta, 'Captain Swing and the Blacksmith' in Oxford , October...

Last month, I walked from Guildford to Gomshall across the North Downs. It was Remembrance Sunday, and before we began we visited a Tesco...

Hallowe’en/Samhain approaches and the presence of the witch in our culture has never been so prevalent. Not because she is casting spells...

When I wrote Captain Swing and the Blacksmith I was focused on the drama of the events of 1830 and did not cast my mind to the next...

'Parvin’s debut novel, though driven by an obsessive love, is no romance; and while a character finds redemption, it is no parable....

Waterloo to Winchester - blur of green hedges, time, azure skies of summer - four hundred years travelled in an hour. I was curious to...

An Experience of Translating Song to Prose. “It must live on, and because of its glorious ricketiness.” Umberto Eco[1] Captain Swing and...

The month of May brought myself and the band to Wiltshire. Our first stop being Avebury which lies on high chalk grassland. I first spent...

More plots from vengeful sweethearts and moonlight shenanigans…this is a first draft from student Georgia Lewis…who has caught the rhythm...

When songs collide anything can happen…I think ‘The Housemaid’s Revenge’ is a ballad in the making – several students saw this as the...

There is nothing like a good folk song rhyme… poor old Georgie Barnwell is beguiled by the ‘enervating wiles’ of a certain lady to murder...

Creating a Historical Voice with Dialect It is impossible to accurately replicate the voices of the distant past as we cannot hear them....

It was a real pleasure to be interviewed by two fellow travellers from the Creative Writing MFA Kingston. Sinead Keegan and Lisa Davison...

Oxfordshire – three days ago. I’m increasingly realising how these stark lines and bare trees, sentinel on low mounds, have shaped my...

I’m very happy that this Creative Writing workshop at Wiltshire and Swindon History centre has been rescheduled to 16th March. I spent...

Poor Avebury was without power and roads were cut off from the outside world on Friday 1st February…I arrived in Swindon in a snow storm,...

Yellow silk, threatening notes and feathered quills will be filling my suitcase for Avebury. After a brilliant rehearsal excited to...

I had a great afternoon with writer, Naomi Clifford, discussing the writing of the novel. We explored the relationship between song,...