To my great excitement, I worked out a way to fit yet another bookcase into my home. Then I had to wait several months for IKEA to admit they would deliver one to my postcode. It finally arrived this week and I spent a happy Saturday assembling it then arranging the contents ( Read more... )

My friend and fellow spy fiction fan Jeff, of spywrite.com, has started a podcast dedicated to Mick Herron's Slough House series of novels and novellas about disgraced MI5 agents sent to work in a dead-end office under the ghastly Jackson Lamb in the hope that they'll get fed up and quit ( Read more... )

1. Are you an essential worker?

Technically - I'm a civil servant - but I don't have a letter, and I get to work from home. I'm not directly involved with coronavirus content but many of my colleagues are, and they are all working very hard to get the correct information out there, in a format everyone can understand.

2. How many drinks have you ( Read more... )

All the things I've been looking forward to are being cancelled left right and centre, but if that's the worst that's going to happen to me and the people I know, I'll be extremely thankful ( Read more... )

My lovely local indie bookshop, Bookseller Crow on the Hill, is in financial difficulties and running a series of fundraising events. The latest of these, last night, was a debate: who is better, Judy Garland or Dame Judi Dench ( Read more... )

Hey, remember when I took part in a podcast on Helen MacInnes? It turns out that once you've done one podcast, they just keep coming.

I suggested to Shane of Spybrary that he do an episode on James Bond continuation author John Gardner. His response was "Great idea, why don't you host it ( Read more... )

Fox Spirit is a UK small press publisher of offbeat fantasy and sci-fi. They're furry-friendly (they'd have to be, with a name like that) and have just released their first all-furry anthology, The Jackal Who Came In From the Cold.

As the name suggests, it's spy-themed, and of course I was going to write and submit something for it. I was ( Read more... )

A couple of months ago, I did something I'd been thinking about for at least half my life and got a tattoo ( Read more... )

Last year I got to know several lovely new people, both online and in real life, through the Spybrary website and podcast for fans of spy fiction. (We call ourselves Spybrarians ( Read more... )

I enjoyed Trigger Mortis, Anthony Horowitz’s 2015 James Bond novel, a great deal, so I’ve been excited for ages about the release of his second, Forever And A Day, on May 31st. Last night I went to see him talk about it at the Royal Festival Hall ( Read more... )