This very ordinary little wooden plaque with tin triangle advertising the sale of watches played a role in saving hundreds of people’s lives in Haarlem during the Second World War. During the period of the nazi occupation of Holland, the Ten Boom family ran a safe house above their clock … Continue reading
God, I think I’m becoming a museum tragic. All of my letters home are filled with the stories I find in them, and in the conversations I rarely have the courage to strike up with strangers. I’m sure I’m boring all my long-suffering friends to death, so instead I should … Continue reading
I really enjoyed visiting Waterland, the district that encompasses both Monnickendam, where these photographs were taken, and Broek. I’m not the first to enjoy a stroll through the area. In 1905, an Englishman by the name of Edward Verrall Lucas published a book about his visit to the Netherlands: A … Continue reading
Guess what? My latest novel, Rupetta, is about to be launched by Tartarus Press in the UK. They are hosting a launch in an old, reputedly haunted, pub in York on February 9th. The pub is called The Golden Fleece. If you can make it, I would love to see … Continue reading
I know, I know. I’m working on that long, wordy post. I promise. I was working on it today, in the snow, at the Cafe Tuin just around the corner in Tweede Tuindwarsstraat. But I got distracted and made a new friend. I hope you like him as much as I … Continue reading
As a reader, I’m fairly hard to please. I never used to be. As a small child I would happily read cereal boxes, ticket stubs, IKEA instructions. But, these days, my tastes have changed. Lately, I’ve read some amazing books, including Lauren Groff’s Arcadia, Wade Davis’s The Wayfinders (based on … Continue reading
This is the beginning of a story – the opening ‘note’ of a story about Matilda, a young girl whose life becomes entangled in the life of the orphan king, Edward VI. This story takes place during a time in English history that never quite happened. Here are some things … Continue reading
As you probably already know, in a recent act of outstanding idiocy, the new Premier of Queensland withdrew funding for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. Plenty of people have posted detailed and intelligent responses to this outrage, while I’ve been offline, so I won’t add my indignant restating of their … Continue reading
Loving a child is a dangerous thing. I think I knew this at the beginning, with my first daughter, when they laid her in my arms. But then again, not really. You can know things and not know them at the same time. I don’t know how this can be … Continue reading