This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday You are walking alone down a dark street, the moon a sliver in the sky, when you hear footsteps tap, tap, tap behind you. How you react, claims the crime writer Val McDermid, is determined by gender: “A woman would think,
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday When she was younger, Barbara Taylor Bradford refused to wear jewellery to an interview. The author of A Woman of Substance and 25 other global bestsellers did not want to “flaunt” her great wealth. (Estimated to be worth £166m, she was
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday The writer tells Danuta Kean how she swapped criminology for exotic dancing to research her new thriller There is something about modern housing estates: the homogenised exteriors; the windows kept small to econom-ise not enlighten; the cars on front drives ready
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday A few years ago, in the pub after work, I laughingly told my then colleagues that I had once been a member of a church affiliated to the notorious Nine O’ Clock Service, where people spoke in tongues and danced down
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday On holiday in St Lucia with his Japanese wife and their young daughter, Tony Parsons became increasingly frustrated by a loud conversation at the next table. A bunch of lads were describing in explicit detail their latest conquests. It was not
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday Rachel Hore looks nervous. Dressed in shades of grey that accentuate the pristine whiteness of her publisher’s clinical offices, the 50-year- old author stands out like a country girl at a City soirée, desperate to disappear but condemned to draw every
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday When I was a child I remember very clearly when books ceased to be illustrated. I was eight and, for a moment, my nascent reading obsession teetered, unsure that my imagination could create images vivid enough to replace the loss. It
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Mslexia Autumn 2011 Scott & Bailey creator Sally Wainwright talks to Danuta Kean about authenticity, why she loathes adaptations and the horror of development hell. Fans of the Scott & Bailey, the latest hit from the pen of Sally Wainwright, who crave a Luther-style meltdown by the ballsy female leads will
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The Independent on Sunday 25th January 2009 Over the past three years, Jill Dawson has been involved with another man. The Fens-based author candidly admits her feelings were so intense that she once signed her name “Rupert” instead of “Ruby”, the nickname used by her family. Rupert is Rupert Brooke,
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The Daily Mail 28th February 2009 There is a book in Melvyn Bragg’s library that he cannot bring himself to read. It isn’t badly written or one he finds distasteful. It has featured on literary prize shortlists around the world and earned its author plaudits. Yet still the book broods
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