About

I write novels about relationships between lovers, spouses, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. I’m interested in the way we negotiate our way through the demands and complexities of contemporary life and like to depict the flaws and foibles, our passions and our conflicts with warmth and humour.

I like reading novels which explore relationships with wit and understanding, books which make you laugh, cry and marvel at the delights and absurdities of human behaviour. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot float my boat, as do contemporary writers who continue this fine tradition. Just a few I love: Jonathan Coe for his comedy and social commentary, Patrick Gale for his grasp of narrative art and breadth of understanding, Elinor Lipman, the quirky Jane Austen of the American scene, for her wit and social satire…

I’m also fascinated by the recent past, the post-war decades which made us the way we were and have a bearing on the way we are. Visit my blog for chat and random musings about the people, places, music, books, films, fashion, events which have rocked our world and which make it sing now.

The Village by Marghanita Laski caught British society on the cusp of change after the war (Retro Reads: 1950s British Novels)

Retro Reads: The Village by Marghanita Laski On May 7, 1945 the BBC in London interrupted its scheduled programme with a newsflash. The war in Europe was over. The following day would be a national holiday. The celebrations which swept through the country on VE-Day are well documented — the celebrating crowds, the dancing, the […]

The Cage by Andrea Newman shows how the Sixties arrived late in provincial Britain

Andrea Newman, who died recently, was a British author who is best remembered for her novels which became steamy, gripping television dramas about characters whose family relationships are fraught with sexual tensions and desires.

Female TV Detectives: Maggie Forbes in The Gentle Touch

London Weekend Television’s series The Gentle Touch (1980-1984) was the first British police TV drama series with a female lead. Welcome to our screens, Detective Inspector Maggie Forbes. You paved the way for those who followed, and provided a template of characteristics developed by writers and actors who went on to create a number of […]

She’s The One: How Jane Austen’s Fanny Price has become a heroine for our times

My new novel in my series of Modern Jane Austen Variations is called She’s The One and has its basis on the main plot of Mansfield Park. Its characters are modern versions of Jane Austen’s, and the significant events in Austen’s novel have their counterparts in my contemporary story. Mansfield Park rarely takes top place […]

How Hilary Bailey humanised the Whitechapel victims years before the Jack the Ripper bandwagon got rolling

The Cry from Street to Street by Hilary Bailey Hilary Bailey’s novel The Cry from Street to Street focuses on the dreadful events in Whitechapel in 1888, when the notorious murderer known as Jack The Ripper brutally killed a number of women and instilled fear and panic into the East End community. A huge industry […]

The ring of truth: How Green Finger by Adam Faith showed us that all that glitters is not gold (Retro Records)

Green Finger is a short, snappy number whose tale of woe is offset by the lively, sparky arrangement by music maestro John Barry. The chirpy strings lead us into the story, delivered in Faith’s trademark cockneyish accent. ‘I bought my girl a diamond ring,’ he tells us, ‘Bigger than the morning star.’

The Seedy Side of Soho in the Swinging Sixties: The Small World of Sammy Lee — Retro Films

Oh, the Swinging Sixties, full of fun, glamour and excitement. The clubs! The girls! The boys! But the The Small World of Sammy Lee, written and directed by Ken Hughes, depicts a different reality.

Peyton Place Revisited — Would You Want To Go Home Again?

As Thomas Wolfe famously said, You Can’t Go Home Again. Re-reading Grace Metalious’s hugely successful 1956 blockbuster novel Peyton Place is an unsettling experience.

Down in the Valley — How Jeannie C Riley Socked It to the Harper Valley PTA

It’s 50 years since a certain Mrs Johnson, resident of Harper Valley, USA, marched into her daughter’s school and disrupted a meeting of the Parent Teacher Association. In 1968, singer Jeannie C Riley took Tom T Hall’s song Harper Valley PTA to the top of the charts, and plunged us into a world made familiar by books, films and songs.

Sharp at Heart: Why We Should Resist the Appeal of Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp

Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp is a vibrant and compelling creation and we can admire her for many things, not least her ability to captivate and entertain us readers and viewers as well as those she manipulates for her own ends, but to admire her without acknowledging the moral emptiness at her core is to distort the totality of her creation.