Susan Hill 
Susan Hill
I bet you remember your first fountain pen. Mine was a Conway Stewart with marbled barrel, I had it for starting Big School and I used to polish it. That… Read more
Susan Hill
Finding an outfit for a wedding is a doddle compared with finding one for an investiture and I wonder how sensible it was to buy my hat first. I love… Read more
The phantom lover
Driving past several long abandoned second- world-war airfields in East Anglia last year I was struck by how spooky they seemed, just like the decommissioned army base that used to… Read more
Winter Notebook
You don’t go to North Norfolk in winter for good weather, but we had it — vast blue skies, sunshine and a couple of wild gales. North Norfolk in summer,… Read more
Blue Night by Joan Didion
This is a raw, untidy, ragged book. Well, grief is all of those things. On the other hand, Didion wrote about the death of her husband in an iconic memoir,… Read more
The great detective
As a child, Mark Girouard must have been easy to buy for at Christmas. An ideal gift would have been a puzzle, preferably the sort that looks easy, but is… Read more
The villain as hero
Juvenilia is an unfortunate word, with its connotations of the derogatory ‘juvenile’. Juvenilia is an unfortunate word, with its connotations of the derogatory ‘juvenile’. When they reach adult estate, most… Read more
Under the skin
Why do so many aspiring writers think it best to begin with the short story and graduate to the novel? It’s madness. The short story is infinitely harder to write… Read more
Futile phantoms
But of course this new book is by Peter Ackroyd, celebrated biographer, historian and chronicler, a bit of a polymath, a man who has written wonderfully informative and erudite books… Read more
Unhelpful issues
It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call… Read more
Avoiding the Wide World
The clue comes early on in the book. ‘Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,’ said the Rat, ‘And that’s something that doesn’t matter either to you or me.… Read more
A dogged foe
Old detectives rarely die — or age, for that matter: Poirot is forever 60, Sherlock Holmes 50, P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh a handsome 38 or so. Old detectives rarely… Read more
Susan Hill
‘Be very careful, Susans, I have find an adder in the wheelbarrow.’ ‘Nah, it’ll be a grass snake, Spiros.’ Stern glare. ‘Susans, don’t forget I am from Corfu.’ ‘OK, it’s… Read more
An indisputable masterpiece
Of how many novelists can it be said that they have never written a bad sentence? Well, it can be said of William Trevor, as it could of his fellow… Read more
Susan Hill
Some friends home-school their three children and hats off to them. I was the sort of cruel, wicked mother who required hers to be out of the house for three… Read more
Latest blogs
- Why, once again, a fall in student immigration is good Andrew Green
- Sally Bercow libelled Lord McAlpine, High Court rules Steerpike
- The British paedophile who’s still on the run James Kirchick
- Revive the Snooper’s Charter? It’s already obsolete David Blackburn
- Jesse Norman interview: Edmund Burke, our chief of men JP O'Malley
- Lee Rigby named as victim of Woolwich attack Sebastian Payne
- The friendless Help-to-Buy scheme Isabel Hardman
