Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald

A few days ago, my knowledgeable friend John Williams tweeted that, 

"Penelope Fitzgerald was treated abominably by parts of the literary establishment for daring to win the Booker Prize for Offshore in 1979 ... she was on The Book Programme afterwards where that dreadful arsehole (and host) Robert Robinson introduced the show by saying that 'the wrong book had won' and encouraged the other guests to tell Fitzgerald what they thought about her winning incorrectly."

Appalled by this, I sought out a copy of Offshore (and also The Gate of Angels, which the Dr recommended). It's a brilliant, short novel about bohemian misfits living on houseboats in Battersea circa 1961 - Alan Hollinghurst says in his introduction that clues in the text to the exact date are a little contradictory. These are liminal people living liminal lives:

"You know very well that we're two of the same kind, Nenna. It's right for us to live where we do, between land and water. You, my dear, you're half in love with your husband, then there's Martha who's half a child and half a girl, Richard who can't give up being half in the Navy, Willis who's half an artist and half a longshoreman, a cat who's half alive and half dead..." (p. 54)

One objection to it winning serious literary prizes may be that it's often funny. An early example has single mother Nenna visit the married couple on the next boat:

"Laura sat down rather heavily.

'How does it feel like to live without your husband?' she asked, handing Nenna a large glass of gin. 'I've often wondered.'

'Perhaps you'd like to fetch some more ice,' [her husband] Richard said. There was plenty.

'He hasn't left me, you know. We just don't happen to be together at the moment.'

'That's for you to say, but what I want to know is, how do you get on without him? Cold nights, of course, don't mind Richard, it's a compliment to him if you think about it.'"(p. 12)

It's the sort of thing, I thought, you might get in Reggie Perrin. Like that, the comedy here masks a lot of melancholic stuff. There are those who can't abide a life on the river, and those who adore such existence but for whom it cannot last. From the local teachers and priest, to the peculiar school friend of Nenna's estranged husband, there is constant pressure to conform with "normal" life on land and be as miserable as everyone else. Then there are the dangers of this kind of life: the threat of falling in to the water, or a boat succumbing to leaks, even the risk of violence...

It's all very neatly observed, the author basing it on her own experience (as she did with many of her novels), but changing things to give one particular real person a less tragic fictional end. Perhaps Offshore was dismissed because of this lightness of touch, but it's also a very smart book, threaded with knowledge and insight. There is lots on the practicalities of such an existence, of the shifting tides, the feel of the water. Nenna's daughters shrewdly spot tiles made by William de Morgan while out mudlarking, and know his life and work enough to correctly judge their value; they strike a hard bargain with the owner of an antique shop who makes the mistake of assuming their ignorance. (We then see the true value of the tiles: the girls earn enough money to splash out on records by Cliff Richard.)

On another occasion, one of the girls tours the Tate, remarking on what Whistler and his contemporaries did and didn't get right in their portraits of the Thames - the behaviour of the water, the behaviour of gulls.

"The attendant watched her, hoping that she would get a little closer to the picture, so that he could relieve the boredom of his long day by telling her to stand back." (p. 59)

It's another example of the knowledge, the skill, of these women being overlooked. But also there's something like Whistler in this novel as a whole: a portrait of the people on the river, a particular, brief moment, the apparent simplicity full of beauty and sadness and truth.

False Value, by Ben Aaronovitch

What a delight to be back in the world of Rivers of London, two years after I read the novella October Man and little more than that since the last novel, Lies Sleeping. This new one starts with the dread prospect that our hero Peter Grant has left the police force and gone into IT - but inevitably things aren't quite what they seem.

The plot involves the threat posed by 3D printing when baddies can make their own guns, and the threat of drones. This is all about IT getting out of hand and taking us into uncharted waters. On top of that, it looks like Peter's new bosses are developing some kind of artificial intelligence...

As usual, what follows is a fast-paced, engaging thriller full of quick wit and telling detail. Peter is surrounded by an ever-growing coterie, as more and more people are brought in on the secret that there is magic in the world. It's a considerable skill to make so many characters distinct and memorable, and despite it being two years since I was last in this story, it's like picking up with good friends - as if no time has passed at all. 

Many of the previous books have been part of a larger story which reached something of a conclusion in the last one, so False Value feels refreshingly new and standalone - for all there are threads to be picked up down the line. And how satisfying to finally learn what happened to Nightingale and the other British wizards during the war. Yes, that's the very word right there. The book is exciting, smart and fun, perfectly executed to leave the reader sated.

Boy in the Tower, by Polly Ho-Yen

My nine year-old son recommended this as an audiobook for a long drive, having been set it as a class reading book in both his school in south London last year and then his new school when we moved up north. He was amazed to discover that it's from 2015, so not written during - and about - lockdown, and I can see why. It also predates the Grenfell fire but feels like a comment on that, too.

It's told by schoolboy Ade, who does the shopping and chores for his agoraphobic mum, who just wants to sleep all day in their high-rise flat in south London. We follow Ade's struggles at school, his friends and enemies. It's all very well observed by Ho-Yen, a former teacher.

And then there's something else - a local building collapses, then another... and then more, sometimes with people inside. Bit by bit, the recognisable, identifiable world of school and shops is taken over by a crisis right out of John Wyndham. By midway, Ade is trapped in his high rise, which is itself under threat, and the rest of the book is taken up with his efforts to survive in the scary new normal that is now.

The prose style is straight forward but full of telling detail and strong emotion, with Ade having to navigate the traumatised but persevering grown-ups. There are some terrifying, vivid scenes such as when Ade ventures out beyond the safety of the block. I also liked the more subtle stuff: Ade sometimes doesn't quite understand what he has witnessed but we do - such as when, towards the end, we learn the cause of his mum's condition.

Really, what makes this so compelling is not the nightmare world conjured but the effort of people to look out for one another in the midst of awful crisis. The sort of book to linger in your thoughts and dreams long afterward, haunting a whole generation.

Edy Hurst's War of the Worlds

I'm a guest on a special episode of comedian Edy Hurst's podcast devoted to The War of the Worlds, nattering about the life of HG Wells, his influence on George Orwell and on Doctor Who, and some other stuff.

Interlude 3: Justice for Wells w/ Simon Guerrier

Apple: https://apple.co/3hQYpIS Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3kySidU

You can still listen to the BBC radio documentary I produced on HG Wells and the H-Bomb, while "Alls Wells That Ends Wells" is an extra on the DVD of 1966 Doctor Who story The Ark:

V for Victory, by Lissa Evans

Entirely selfishly, I bought this for the Dr's birthday so that I could read it. It's the third in a trilogy, after Crooked Heart and its prequel, Old Baggage - both of which I adored. 

We pick up with young Noel Bostock and his adopted aunt Vee - though she's neither of those things officially. Now going under the name Mrs Margery Owens, she and Noel bugger on through the chaos of north London at the fag-end of the Second World War. At any moment of any day, a V2 might fall on them and it's exhausting - not least because the chores and home-schooling must still somehow be done. Still, there's romance kindling in the air for each of them. And then they both stumble into people who know something of their past - and might expose their secrets...

As before, there's a wealth of telling historical detail worked deftly into the breezy tale, which I knocked through in a matter of days. It's so teeming with life and emotion. We really feel the outrage of Winnie the Warden discovering that her harrowing real-life experience has been filletted by her sister for a sexy novel. Or there's Noel's infatuation with a girl who's moved away:

"Noel recognized Genevieve Lumb's neat but forceful handwriting. Even the thought that she had licked the envelope was quite physically stirring." (p. 53).

The remarkable thing is that these extraordinary, unprecedented times feel utterly real. But it's also a delight to spend time in the company of good people just trying to get by, despite all the crap going on. 

I was especially moved by the ending, where Vee and Noel face some tricky emotional stuff relating to his biological parents. It's so perfectly done, so impossible to describe here without spoiling. At one point, Vee wonders what might have happened if she'd not made a connection with this awkward teen at a critical moment, how nearly he might have been lost. But we leave them happy, the war over and a new world on the horizon. After all the devastation, what survives is the love. 

The Making of OHMSS, by Charles Helfenstein

I've long coveted this huge, exhaustive history of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), having first heard about it from my mate Samira Ahmed. Helfenstein details the history of the book, the drafts of the script, the day-by-day production on the movie (and pieces together some missing scenes), the release and legacy - including promotion and merchandise.

It is chock full of extraordinary images and insight. I shall be haunted by writer Richard Maibaum's obsession with scenes involving monkeys, which he tried to get into various Bond films and was thwarted each time. The material filming on 2 February 1969 of Lazenby chasing a villain down the Peter's Hill steps with the St Paul's Cathedral behind him echo the invasion by Cybermen, filmed on 8 September the previous year; the conclusion of the chase involving an underground train seem finally to have surfaced in Skyfall (2012).

My baby brother, who kindly bought this for my birthday, described it as the "Andrew Pixley of Bond", and I can think of no higher praise. I think the difference between Helfenstein and Pixley is that the latter rarely interviews cast and crew himself - thank heavens, as otherwise I'd never be asked to do anything. Helfenstein has endeavoured, over years, to speak to everyone involved and the book is a much a record of his friendships with key personnel such as director Peter Hunt. A last spread of images of the author with these people or visiting the locations shows how much this has been an epic labour of love.

If I don't share the author's passion for this particular movie, it's made me want to revisit it. I'm even more covetous of the follow-up volume on The Living Daylights and find myself picking over which title I'd want to subject to such study...

(Since you're asking, You Only Live Twice to cover Connery's dissatisfaction, the volcano-base set and all the stuff happening in '67, which would dovetail with my book on The Evil of the Daleks.)

• Me on the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)

An Unearthly Child takes place on a Tuesday

I've just rewatched An Unearthly Child, the very first episode of Doctor Who, and noticed something I don't think I've noticed before. On the blackboard in Ian Chesterton's room, it says "HOMEWORK TUESDAY".

Below this, in the bottom-right corner of the blackboard, it says "FOR THURSDAY":

So the homework has just been set, and the episode takes place on a Tuesday.

We can narrow things down a bit further. In the second episode of Doctor Who, Ian says that he and the others were just, "in a junkyard in London in England in the year 1963."

When in the year might this be? The episode was broadcast on Saturday 23 November 1963, and recorded in studio on Friday 18 October, but that doesn't necessarily tell us when the events depicted are set. But the daylight depicted - or not - in the episode can give us a clue.

In the first episode, it's dark by the time Susan reaches the junkyard after the end of her school day. It is dark enough inside the yard - which is open to the sky - that both Ian and the Doctor use torches. What time did it get dark?

Before leaving school, Susan tells her teachers, "I like walking through the dark," which implies it is already dark. The episode also begins with a policeman walking through the already dark lane outside the junkyard, picking out details with a torch; we then dissolve to the school just as the final bell rings. The implication is that the dissolve transports us in space but not in time - that it is already dark enough to need torchlight before the end of the school day.

But schools usually finish mid-afternoon and, as I know from collecting my own children, it's not dark at the end of the school day, even in the midst of winter. I checked at timeanddate.com, and the earliest sunset in London predicted for December 2020 is 15:51 - the sunset between 8 and 16 December.

The ringing of the school bell suggests that Susan hasn't stayed later than the end of the school day, for example at an after-school club. So if An Unearthly Child is set on a Tuesday in London 1963 where it's (almost) dark by 3.30, it must be 10 or 17 December.

In other words, the first episode of Doctor Who is set a little in the future.

PS: the broadcast version of An Unearthly Child was not the first version made. The earlier, "pilot" episode, included on the DVD, was recorded on 27 September - and there the blackboard is blank:

PPS: 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks returns to the school and junkyard in 1963, and a calendar on the wall in the school says November - but its broad daylight at tea-time, which doesn't seem quite right. 2013's The Day of the Doctor suggests that Totters Lane and the junkyard are in the immediate vicinity of the school.

ETA: Wise Jonathan Morris points out that the story could just as easily be set in January or February 1963. Wise Paul MC Smith, author of the exhaustive new book The TARDIS Chronicles 

suggests March, and points out this detail of the day of the week had already been discussed in Cornell, Day & Topping's The Discontinuity Guide (1995). Bother.

The Star Outside my Window, by Onjali Q Raúf

Ten year-old Aniyah is a star hunter, an astronomer, thrilled by the discovery of a new star in the night sky. But she thinks the star is her mum, whose heart has ascended, and is determined to ensure that the star hunters at the Royal Observatory Greenwich give it her mum's name. As she sets off with her friends from the foster home on an epic quest to Greenwich, we realise what Aniyah and her five year-old brother do not: their mum was murdered - by their dad.

I rattled through this exciting, emotional story full of high stakes. It would be wretched to quibble the practicalities of the journey Aniyah and her friends undertake - is there really a bus from Victoria coach station to Island Gardens, and could you get all that way without anyone checking you'd paid? - or the physics of the star that passes close to Earth. It's certainly never easy, and Aniyah and her friends show incredible daring along the way. The conclusion, in which Aniyah must face the awful truth that she's evaded so long, is beautifully done.

For all the awfulness, the book is peppered with kindly adults - the amazing foster mum Mrs Iwuchukwu who has tragedies in her own life, kindly superhero actress Audrey Something, and helpful astronomer Professor Grewal. The other foster children all have their histories, too - and in the case of all but one of them, that makes them keen to support Aniyah whatever it takes. That really got me: people inspired by their own experience of crisis to help someone else through theirs.

I also liked the resolution for the "villainous" character, Sophie - explaining her insecurities and returning the thing she takes from Aniyah without her ever quite apologising. It's a remarkable adventure but Raúf ensures that it feels credible to the end. The story wraps up the plot about the star satisfactorily but I find myself wondering what becomes of all these characters afterwards - always a good sign in a book.

Raúf explains in the end section the inspiration for the story - the murder of her own aunt Mumtahina, which also inspired her to set up Making Herstory - and is careful about warning readers in advance of the subject matter.

"The author of this story does not like to link the word 'Domestic' to the word 'Abuse'. This is because the word 'Domestic' implies that abuses happening inside the home should remain private, even when they constitute a crime, whilst also making many people too embarrassed to report abuses. However, as the prevailing term, she has used it throughout this book for clarity." (footnote to the dedication)

So this is a lively story about a very difficult subject told with flair, insight and sensitivity. 

Dracula for Doctors, by Fiona Subotsky

This fascinating new book on the medical context of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula is by Fiona Subotsky - a retired professor of psychiatry and the widow of Milton Subotsky, producer of the Amicus horror films. I've just submitted a review so shall not detail my thoughts on it here, but here's a note to self for something to look into:

"In 1871 [Henry Maudsley] admitted to Lawn House, his small private asylum, a woman called Louisa Lowe whose spiritualistic conversion had led her to 'Passive Writing' in order to communicate with a spirit. Her clergyman spouse was far from keen to have her released, and Maudsley seems to have colluded with this - partly on the grounds that she was threatening to divorce her husband. The latter, however, overplayed his hand and attempted to get hold of his wife's money through a Chancery suit. Maudsley, possibly to avoid the necessary legal review, had Mrs Lowe removed to a different asylum, from which she was very shortly released." (Dracula for Doctors, p. 154)

She then attempted to sue the Lunacy Commission and when that failed became active in the Lunacy Law Reform Association, in 1877 getting Maudsley and others involved in her case questioned by a Select Committee. Louisa then helped Mrs Georgina Weldon escape from an asylum and, in 1884, successfully sued the doctor who'd incarcerated her.

This, and accounts of Louisa's shocking treatment in the asylum itself, are apparently detailed in her book The Bastilles of England (1883).

Dan Dare on Radio 4 Extra

Reign of the Robots, the Dan Dare story by Frank Hampson for Eagle comic that I adapted for audio, will be broadcast on Radio 4 Extra later this month.

• Reign of the Robots part one - 18:25, 21 December 2019
• Reign of the Robots part two - 18:30, 28 December 2019

Dashing test pilot, Dan Dare, Lieutenant Digby and the Eagle Corporation’s Professor Jocelyn Peabody finally return to Earth after battling The Mekon on Venus. Landing in a seemingly deserted central London, they establish that, with the date being 24 June 2045, they have lost ten years.

With limited resources, Dare, Digby and Peabody set about liberating the Earth from an army of ruthless robots. The task becomes more desperate than ever when they discover the alien force behind the invasion...


CAST:
Dan Dare …. Ed Stoppard
Digby …. Geoff McGivern
Professor Peabody …. Heida Reed
The Mekon …. Raad Rawi
George Bryan …. Dean Harris
On-board Computer …. Diane Webber
Sir Hubert .... Michael Cochrane
Eko .... Amy Humphreys

Original music: Imran Ahmad

Dramatised by Simon Guerrier from an original story by Frank Hampson.

Produced and directed by Andrew Mark Sewell.

First released as an audiobook by B7 Productions in 2017.

Conan Doyle and London

Yesterday, I attended Conan Doyle and London, a one-day symposium organised by the Institute of English Studies and linked to the forthcoming deluxe reissue of Conan Doyle's books by Edinburgh University Press. It was a fascinating, scholarly day - but perfectly pitched to both academics and Sherlockians, as well as the itinerant hack (that was me).

We began with Douglas Kerr's "Man of Letters, Man About Town", which explored Doyle's life in London - the places he lived, the clubs he attended, the male-dominated culture of dinners and connections he was part of.

"Few men are ever absolutely natural when there are women in the room." Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures: An Autobiography, p. 265.

That clubbable culture was essential to his career: on 30 August 1889, at a dinner at the Langham Hotel, Doyle was commissioned by editor Joseph M Stoddart to write the second Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Sign of Four, to be published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Oscar Wilde was at the same dinner, and soon afterward wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray for the same editor and publication (the implication being, I think, that he was commissioned at the same dinner).

Douglas' first slide was of the blue plaque on the wall of 12 Tennison Road, South Norwood - not far from where I live - and I didn't know that almost as soon as he moved there, Doyle wrote Beyond the City (1891) all about suburban life. As Douglas said, Doyle was writing about experience he'd not quite yet had himself.

I should also add that before we started, Douglas made a point of introducing himself to everyone as we arrived, making us all personally welcome. As neither an academic or a Sherlockian, I was feeling a bit of a fraud, a bit daunted by the knowledgeable company I had snuck myself among, so really appreciated that.

Next was Jonathan Cranfield's "Of Time and the City: Conan Doyle and London Print Culture." As a jobbing writer, this was right up my street. How fascinating to understand the kind of literary culture Doyle had grown up in - as a child he sat on Thackeray's knee, as Thackeray was a friend of Doyle's grandfather John. Jonathan also listed Doyle's early publications - one-off commissions in very different styles, each for very different publications. It really hit home: that's how writers begin, trying anything and anyone, slowly developing voice and the all-important relationships with editors and readers. I could well understand Doyle's description of Cornhill editor James Payn, who he met at yet another dinner (this time at the Ship in Greenwich) as a "warden at the gate."

Andrew Lang, editor of Longman's, had dealt with this early, green Doyle and remained a little dismissive of him even after Doyle hit it big.

"Now the native pewter of Sherlock Holmes is a sixpenny magazine with plenty of clever illustrations." Andrew Lang, "The Novels of Conan Doyle", Quarterly Review (July 1904), p. 160.

But Jonathan seemed to argue that Lang had a point. The Strand was the first magazine to have an art editor (WHJ Boot), with a picture on every "opening" - I think that means spread. That wasn't just Sidney Paget's extraordinary, vivid illustrations: the Holmes stories include maps, ciphers and fragments of documents. (In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie mentions Holmes just a paragraph before the first mention of her own detective, Hercule Poirot, indicating the legacy of Doyle; her book also has maps and fragments.)

I was also fascinated by the letters Doyle sent to the press about other writers, muttering at ungentlemanly behaviour of publicising their stories or making too much of the process. He refers in the two letters Jonathan showed us to "wire-pulling," and it only occurred to me afterwards that this might link to Doyle's interest in spiritualism - his strong belief in the truth of it in principle, and his horror at those who faked or exploited it. Was writing just as much of a mystical process to him?

Next came Andrew Glazzard's "'A great traffic was going on, as usual, in Whitehall': Public Places and Private Spaces in Sherlock Holmes' London". This was great, using maps to explore the settings of three spy stories: "The Naval Treaty", "The Second Stain" (a case which Watson tells us in "The Naval Treaty" that he cannot share) and "The Bruce Partingdon Plans". Each one is about the loss of compromising documents, and although foreign agents are keen to buy the missing papers, the fault often lies with incompetent civil servants. Andrew argued that this romanticisation of bureaucracy on which the fate of the nation then hangs would appeal to white-collar commuters reading the Strand.

He also linked the bureacractic incompetence of well-connected duffers (something that would never happen in government now, of course) to the "Hotel Cecil" cabinet, stuffed full of relatives of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, the man from whom we have the phrase "Bob's your uncle."  He also linked the stories to other real events in the time they were written or published: the first Official Secrets Act (1889), which was a response to internal carelessness not external threat; the signing of the Entente Cordial in 1904; the coming together of train companies in 1907 which resulted in the first consolidated map of the London Underground network in 1908. Matching story to map shows the all-important journey is from one triangle of lines on the left to a triangle of lines on the right. In these stories, he suggested, we could see a changing relationship to Europe - particularly Germany - in the years preceding the war.

I was really taken by Andrew noting how much the role played in government by Mycroft Holmes changes between his first appearance in "The Greek Interpreter" and his return in "The Bruce Partingdon Plans". It struck me that Mycroft in the latter is an all-powerful special adviser of the sort we're more used to today, a kind of Dominic Cummings but competent. Surely, I thought, there's a story to be told in which Mycroft misses some small element in his great calculations to devastating effect, where things don't quite go as planned despite his reputation for cleverness...

We stopped for lunch, where I chatted to an American academic who specialises in the history of Spanish-speaking countries but is interested in Doyle the spiritualist. Then we were back for
"I have my eyes on a suite in Baker Street" by Catherine Cooke from Westminster Libraries (of which I'm devoted, card-carrying member). Catherine detailed the history of the real Baker Street and  the various efforts by Sherlockians to work out where 221B "really" must have been. That then expanded into exploring the bits of London Doyle knew himself, such as the Psychic Bookshop, Library and Museum he part-owned at 2 Victoria Street, telegram address "ECTOPLASM, SOWEST, LONDON". Catherine's paper was so packed with clever deductions and interesting titbits of history - the Marlyebone Road was the first ever bypass, designed to relieve pressure on Oxford Street - that I was too absorbed to scribble many notes.

Then it was "Conan Doyle and Medical London" by Roger Luckhurst - my friend, whose tweet had made my buy a ticket for the event in the first place. Roger's focus was the period 1890-91 when Doyle had consulting rooms on a site almost exactly where we were sitting in Senate House. Just as previous speakers used maps to elucidate Doyle's literary world, Roger used maps to show Doyle's universe as a doctor - where he was, where he aspired to be, what else was around him. The big money was just to the west in Harley Street, working as a specialist, but that was open only to the elite. Doyle, a relatively provincial general practitioner working in Southsea until 1890, then spent a train journey with Sir Malcolm Morris - a well-respected surgeon who'd also started as a lowly GP. As well as his practice, Morris was a writer, a member of the MCC and the Reform Club - and Roger showed the profound influence he had on Doyle's ambitions - the kind of man Doyle wanted to be. That train journey, too, was to see Robert Koch - yet another provincial doctor outside the establishment who'd made it big anyway (in Koch's case by his work on anthrax).

Roger's editing the Edinburgh edition of Doyle's Round the Red Lamp (1894), a collection of medical stories that sound gruesome and disturbing, and were not well-received at the time. Roger linked that response to the horror that met the trial of Oscar Wilde the following year. I dared to ask a question: a lot of the Sherlock Holmes stories are pretty dark and disturbing, and they're also relayed by a doctor - so what made these medical stories different? Roger suggested that Holmes solves or explains the events in his stories and Watson anyway won't share the worst or most disturbing cases. Both, then, frame the events in a reassuring way.

As the son of a consultant, I know doctors share horror stories with one another. There's a sense, I think, of Doyle sharing the kind of tales he swapped in the gentlemanly clubs he belonged to. At least, that's the sense I get without reading the stories - which I now very much mean to.

In the tea-break I spoke to a couple of young academics sat near me: both American, both here pursuing studies that overlapped with Doyle. One asked me how long I'd lived in London. When I said just over 20 years, he said that was how long he'd lived. Reader, I cried into my complimentary biscuit.

Finally, Christine Ferguson's "Cosmopolitan Spiritualism and Doyle's The Land of Mist" explored the 1926 novel seen as propaganda for Doyle's belief in the spirit world - in which even the great cynic Professor Challenger goes from calling it all "twaddle" to becoming a true believer. Christine described Challenger as a kind of blend of Brian Blessed and TH Huxley, with a quote from Huxley where he also described spiritualism as twaddle.

The general consensus in the room from those who've read and know the book is that The Land of Mist isn't very good. Christine thought Arnold Bennett's The Glimpse (1909) a better advertisement for the world of the spirits, one in vivid colour whereas Doyle's is all grey. That made me think of A Matter of Life and Death, where the after-life is in monochrome and to be appealed against. Christine also said she found Doyle's evidence, his arguments, unconvincing - and afterwards it struck me that if he'd really wanted to convince his readers of the truth of his beliefs, he'd have done better using another of his characters. Imagine Sherlock Holmes as a convert, the zeal with which he'd pronounce the evident, empirical truth...

To conclude, Douglas Kerr told us more about the forthcoming reissue of Doyle's books, beginning with the autobiography Memories and Adventures, which should be out sometime next year. There was natter and wine after, and then I reached St Pancras just as a fast, direct train back to Norwood Junction pulled in - Doyle's ghost evidently looking over me. Home in good time to say goodnight to the children, me and the Dr then caught up on the final episode of Dublin Murders, a properly disturbing case filled with the ghosts of the past.

Related wittering:

• "Silver Blaze," my review for the Lancet Psychiatry of 2015 film Mr Holmes
• "My immortal Holmes," my review for the Lancet Psychiatry of a 2015 Sherlock Holmes exhibition
• Me on 2011 Holmes novel The House of Silk
• Me on 2005 novel Arthur and George, about Conan Doyle
• Me on Doyle and canon

Standing with Samira

Around the childcare, the Dr and I had turns this week to stand in solidarity with Samira Ahmed taking the BBC to tribunal over unequal pay. I've been Samira's producer on a number of projects, including four documentaries for BBC Radio 3, and follow the case with close interest.

Picture by Aaron Chown / PA Wire / PA Images - ref: 47995752

Crooked Heart, by Lissa Evans

Old Baggage, which I loved, is a prequel to this brilliant, comic novel about bad behaviour during the Second World War.

We begin a little after Old Baggage left off, with eccentric ex-Suffragette Mattie Simpkin living just off Hampstead Heath with the small boy, Noel Bostock, she's sort of not-quite adopted. But Mattie's memory and wits are fast escaping her, and when war breaks out Noel is sent to St Albans with other evacuees. There, he's taken on by Vera Sedge, who thinks he might help earn some money in the latest of her ill-fated scams. But nerdy, lonely, grieving Noel has ideas about how to improve their takings...

Evans conjures a dirty, drab and distinctly criminal Blitz, where even the wardens are on the take - I think the most distressing, haunting moment is a woman being led off to an asylum while her house is robbed by the men ostensibly helping her. Life is hard even before the bombs start falling, full of tragedy and meanness and indifference. But as we weave our way through Noel and Vee's adventures, and those of Vee's own mother and son, there's the promise of something to light up the dark - hope of connection, perhaps even a little joy.

That's the gift here: so much of what happens is miserable, so much of what's described is viscerally horrible. And yet the character, the humour, the compassion shine through and make every page a delight.

15 years of The Coup

Fifteen years ago today, on the hot, sunny morning of Saturday, 7 August 2004, I followed a print-out from Streetmap round the back of the Academy in Brixton to a tiny cul-de-sac, Moat Place. It was my first visit to Moat Studios, for the recording of my audio play, The Coup - the first of more than 60 I've since written for Big Finish.

The Coup is available for free from the Big Finish website.

In August 2004, I'd been freelance for two years and Big Finish had published six of my short Doctor Who stories. The third of these, "An Overture Too Early", had been a last-minute replacement for someone who'd had to drop out. As a result, I got more work when things fell through or needed doing quick. Assistant producer Ian Farrington also liked the way I'd written the long-established character of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Ian was producing a Doctor Who spin-off series about UNIT, the army division that investigates weird goings on and then blows them up. He told me this series would be set in the present day with an all-new cast of characters, influenced by the then hip TV shows 24 and The West Wing. But he also wanted the Brigadier to feature in two episodes - the "pilot" episode to be given away free on a CD with Doctor Who Magazine to lure in the punters, and in the final episode of the series. I slowly realised he was suggesting I write the former.

With writers Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett, Ian had devised an arc story about a rival organisation to UNIT, and he was also keen on using a character from a previous Big Finish play - Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood, played by a then up and coming actor called David Tennant. Brimmicombe-Wood had been created by writer Jonathan Clements, so Ian brought him on board too, as well as our friend Joseph Lidster. Between us, we emailed ideas back and forth and the UNIT series took shape.

CJ in The West Wing inspired our lead character, Emily Chaudhry - I borrowed the surname from an old friend of mine who I'd recently got back in touch with. Doctor Who on TV had established that UNIT covered up evidence of alien invasions, so the idea was that the cool, unflappable Emily would be the one they put in front of the cameras to give high quality bullshit. I named other characters - French, Ledger and Winnington - after old friends I'd lost contact with but who'd been into Doctor Who. There was a chance, I thought, they'd still be reading DWM - and two of them were and subsequently got in touch.

Ian and Iain gave me elements to work into my story - such as all the details about this new rival organisation to UNIT - and Ian was keen that my pilot episode should include an old monster from the TV show as an added sell. The Silurians were his suggestion. Otherwise, the plot was left up to me.

Previous CDs given away with DWM had offered small-scale comic vignettes, side-steps rather than full-on adventures. I suggested doing something bigger and more like an action movie. What crisis might flap the unflappable Chaudhry, I thought. What about if UNIT were outed and finally had to admit to the existence of aliens? That seemed to match Ian's desire to take his UNIT series somewhere new and unexpected, and the other writers seemed to agree - or, at least, not object.

So I got on with writing my episode, starting with a Silurian/UNIT battle at Potters Fields by Tower Bridge. That's the location of City Hall - as if the Silurians are attacking the Mayor of London. I chose it because Tower Bridge is a well-known landmark the listener would be able to visualise, and because I'd passed through Potters Fields each day for months on my way to work.

Writer Jonathan Morris had provided very useful notes on my first few short stories so I sent my first draft script to him, and to my friends David Darlington and Robert Dick. They all said much the same thing - that I needed to cut down my dialogue to make it pacier and more exciting. The result was that I cut back the long speeches but didn't replace it with more scenes, so the play ended up running shorter than the 25 minutes requested. I don't think I even knew then the rough word count of 4,500 words for that length of time - my version is just 3,761 words. My stage directions aren't specific enough, and there are two long speeches that have people talking over them but contain information the listener shouldn't miss. (I've included the Brigadier's full speech below.) I look back on the script now in horror at my greenness.

The version of the script I've got is dated 6 June 2004, a clean copy without notes or revisions. There were plenty of changes needed to get it to this point, but I can't remember what they were. I remember Ian being very patient and encouraging.

(ETA: Jonny Morris has kept my first draft, from 30 April 2004, which I sent to him, Matthew Griffiths, Robert Dick, Ben Woodhams and Peter Anghelides for comment. It is just over 4,000 words long - and doesn't include Orgath's speech as an appendix at the end as the later version does. Which means I cut about 1,000 words from this version!)

So, on 7 August I arrived at the studio. They'd already recorded some of the UNIT series proper that week, the series regulars established, the pronunciation of names fixed. Ian was directing my story, and I mostly sat in the background being overwhelmed. My friend Scott Andrews, who I'd written a small role for, was brave enough to ask Nicholas Courtney - the actor who played the Brigadier - if he was going to be in the new TV version of Doctor Who, the one with Christopher Eccleston which had started filming just a couple of weeks before. Nick told us he hadn't heard anything and modestly suggested he was no one important. He then asked me why, in my story, the Brigadier had a knighthood. I told him that after all the times he'd saved the Earth he deserved it, and he was rather taken by that. He asked about the origin of my surname, and got interested when Scott mentioned I'd just started freelancing for the House of Lords. We gamely discussed a new story, about the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lethbridge-Stewart. Perhaps he'd be defending aliens from humans...

In those days, it was rare to have a camera on your mobile phone so there were no selfies. I don't remember anyone taking photographs for publicity - I think they covered the UNIT series on other recording days. Besides, we were on a tight schedule. Looking back, I realise Nick made a point of finding time to talk to me and Scott.

Otherwise, I remember just being awe-struck by the cast, and wishing I'd given the brilliant Sara Carver a bit more to do as Winnington. We finished at lunch-time and while the cast went to the pub - in the days before Big Finish started providing its own infamous lunches - I had to rush off to Bristol for my cousin's wedding. By coincidence, the friend I'd named Currie after was putting me up for the night.

The Coup was issued with DWM #351 in December 2004. Davy Darlington worked wonders with the sound design and reviews - as much as I dared to look - seemed positive. Having delivered my pilot episode I was no longer involved in the production of the UNIT series but Ian sent me the CDs as they were released, so I found out what happened after all I'd set up. In January I was commissioned for a second Big Finish play, The Lost Museum, which was recorded in March.

Around this time, I was passing through Charing Cross station when someone shouted at me. "You!" said Nicholas Courtney. "You have a French name." I went over and said hello, and Nick told me he was on his way to the pub to meet Tom Baker. He asked if I'd like to join them. It was mid-morning and I was on my way to a freelance job, and anyway I thought I'd never survive a day in the pub with those two. Really, I was just in shock. I asked where they'd be and said I'd look in during my lunch hour. I did, and they weren't there.

On 23 April, Nick Courtney appeared on Doctor Who Confidential and suggested that the Brigadier might now be in the House of Lords. I emailed Ian a few days later, referring to this and suggesting a Lord Lethbridge-Stewart story for the second series of UNIT - should it happen. I had the bare bones of a plot, too. "We'll see..." said Ian, cryptically - already knowing that the chances were slim of doing more with his version of UNIT, what with David Tennant having just been cast in another role...

There wasn't a second series of UNIT, and despite my best efforts no one else took up my Lord Lethbridge-Stewart story. But when Nick Courtney was invited to reprise his role on TV, in 2008's Enemy of the Bane, the Brigadier retained his knighthood.

APPENDIX 1: BRIGADIER’S SPEECH IN FULL:

For purposes of rehearsing it and as background in Scenes 18, 20 and 22.

I doubt many of you have any idea who I am. That is just as it should be. Because of the nature of my former work, I’m not allowed to tell you either. 

This country has often been faced with threats, with enemies. The forces assigned to counter those threats have been, necessarily, covert.

Though we cannot divulge details of the work we do, we are accountable. In my time as head of the UK arm of UNIT, I reported directly to the Prime Minister. That probably explains the knighthood.

Even though they do not have access to the details that we supply the Government, the general public may still know of UNIT, and have some understanding of our security remit. 

As a result, significant changes such as those taking place today, need to be explained, if only to allay public concern. That is why I have been called in. 

Change is good. UNIT has always known that. I hope ICIS will also be able to remember that. And to forgive me, now, for stealing their thunder. 

UNIT was formed to investigate extra-terrestrial phenomenon. 

In nearly forty years, it has been directly responsible for preventing more than 200 attacks by alien beings. Axons, Cybermen, Zygons, Quarks…

As a part of the United Nations, UNIT was not representing individual states or nations when it repelled these attacks. It represented humanity as a whole. 

Now we’ve made contact with a species who don’t want to conquer the Earth. They want to forge diplomatic links. They’re not even from outer space.

It is therefore my considerable honour to introduce Ambassador Orgath of the Silurian people. Ambassador?

Doctor Who: The Invasion, by Ian Marter

Driving up to Blackpool to collect the wife and children this week, I listened to the audiobook of Doctor Who: The Invasion, a book I loved so much as a kid that I borrowed it several times from Winchester Library. David Troughton is a brilliant choice of narrator, with Nick Briggs providing authentic Cyber voices.

I’ve looked it up, and that book was originally published on 10 October 1985, not quite 17 years after the TV version was broadcast. It was a window on to ancient history – Doctor Who from before even my elder brother and sister had watched it, so old it had been in black and white. Of course, this was also the closest I ever thought I’d come to seeing the episodes themselves. I’d not yet seen any old Doctor Who on video and there’d been just a handful of repeats on TV. But I knew the photo of the Cybermen outside St Paul’ Cathedral from the Doctor Who Monster Book, and remember the vivid thrill of realising this was that story.

Other bits of the book stuck fast in my memory: the ongoing joke where the Doctor mixes up radio etiquette, or Isobel writing notes on her wall because its harder to lose than a scrap of paper. I’m struck now how much Isobel and Zoe vanish from the first half of the story, their insistence on being involved in the second half feeling a little too late. I also liked Ian Marter’s invention of the Russian rocket base (named after Nicholas Courtney) and the collaboration between US and USSR that’s needed to stop the invasion.

That said, it’s striking how much the novelisation lacks in context of other Doctor Who. How strange to begin with a hanging reference to one of the most extraordinary moments in the series ever, without ever explaining:

“The disintegration of the TARDIS in their previous adventure had been a horrifying experience,” (p. 8.) 

The novelisation of that previous adventure, The Mind Robber, was not published until 1987 (I never read it, and watched the TV repeat in 1992 with no idea what was about to happen). We’re not told, either, in what context Jamie and Zoe have both met the Cybermen before – for the latter, The Wheel in Space wasn’t published until 1988 – or that Zoe hasn’t already met Lethbridge Stewart.

There’s something strange, too, about referring to this Doctor as “the dapper Time Lord” (p. 11). Dapper isn’t right for this scruffy vagabond of time, and we didn’t learn that he’s a Time Lord until four stories later. (There’s also something odd about referring to him like that anyway, wrote this human.)

Ian Marter is also profligate with adverbs and often he tells us how dialogue is spoken – tersely or sarcastically, gasped or panted – when the words spoken tell us implicitly. But the main thing is how violent this version is.

“The Cyberman’s laser unit emitted a series of blinding flashes and Packer’s body seemed to alternate from positive to negative in the blistering discharge. His uniform erupted into flames and his exposed skin crinkled and fused like melted toffee papers.” (p. 145)

If nothing else, Jamie wouldn’t be able to rob the dead Packer of his jacket, which he then wears in The War Games.

(Actor Frazer Hines tells me about that in the Jamie and Second Doctor set from the Doctor Who Figurine Collection.)

Black Archive: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Jonathan Morris

My friend Jonny's book on 1964 Doctor Who story The Dalek Invasion of Earth is excellent - and not only because its reference to my own book in the same Black Archive series says nice things. 

Jonny's focus is the development of the story - from initial idea, through first and final draft of the script, the changes made when it went before the TV cameras and then its adaptations on the big screen and in print. Thrillingly, he's managed to get hold of Terry Nation's first draft scripts - or copies held in private hands, since the originals are no longer held in the BBC's own archives - and a first draft of the script for the movie. The former is especially interesting, as comparison with the camera scripts (used when the story went in front of the cameras) reveals the extent of work contributed by story editor David Whitaker. The most astonishing insight - to me - is that writers were likely to only produce a single draft which Whitaker would then rewrite himself. No rewrites! It's another world!

It would be a shame to spoil any more of the gems here. It's a compelling, engaging original piece of research. Especially pleasingly, I'd hoped it might provide some context for a thing I'm writing about one of the characters in the story; it has loads.

The view from the top of the BT Tower

Portrait by Nimbos

Last night, Nimbos took me on an extra-special birthday treat - to the top of the BT Tower.

As part of the London Festival of Architecture, Tim Ross was doing a comedy set on the 34th floor, and as well as that we got a complimentary glass of fizz and the most extraordinary views as the outer part of the room slowly, slowly revolved.

Here are the pictures and videos I took:

Lies Sleeping, by Ben Aaronovitch

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since my holiday in Salonica in January 2011 where I read my friend Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London, but I recently listened to the audio version of that first instalment and it all came flooding back. Peter Grant is a cop who can do magic, investigating weird shit in London...

Lies Sleeping is the seventh novel in the series - there's also a novella and a spin-off comic series. Here, there's the usual mix of streetwise wit and procedural detail, grounding the investigation in real life and science and history. Ben's gift is to make it feel authentic.

"... me and Guleed ended up in a corridor at UCH guarding [a suspect]'s hospital room, along with a reassuringly solid member of Protection Command in full ballistic armour and armed with an H&K MP5 machine gun. Her name was Lucy and she had three children under the age of five.
'Compared to them,' she told us, 'I don't find this job stressful at all.'
You use Protection Command people for this kind of job because unlike SCO19 they're trained to do guard duty. You want a certain kind of personality who can stand around in the rain for eight hours and still be awake enough to shoot someone in the central body mass at a moment's notice." (pp. 14-15).

There a big, diverse cast of characters, and many now feel like friends. Then there's eye-popping action stuff, some of it read with your heart in your mouth.

It's obviously difficult to write about this book without spoiling earlier instalments, but it's been a real pleasure to bathe in this world again. I especially like how it's a satisfying, standalone story in its own right, but full of stuff pushing forward so that nothing can be the same.

The Waterstones edition includes a bonus story, "Favourite Uncle", told from the perspective of Peter's 15 year-old trainee, Abigail and is a nice bit of Christmas whimsy, never quite going where you'd expect.

Transcription, by Kate Atkinson

This is brilliant. In 1950, Juliet Armstrong is a BBC radio producer working in Schools (the department always has a capital S). But ten years before, she worked for the government, transcribing recordings of a group of Nazi sympathisers - as well as doing some more active spy work. We cut back and forth between the two roles as a dark secret from her past threatens to return and engulf her...

As a radio producer who still does a lot of transcribing myself, it all felt brilliantly authentic - for all Atkinson says in her afterword that she made so much of it up. In all the best ways, it has the feel of le Carre - with the language of moles and dead-letter drops. Juliet is just one of many in the book to move from MI5 to the BBC without quite leaving the former.

"There was a subtle - and perhaps not so subtle - emphasis in Schools on citizenship. Juliet wondered if it was to counter the instinct towards Communism." (p. 178)

But the spy plot and moral uncertainties are just part of the appeal. The detail of ordinary life is all perfectly conveyed and compelling. When one of Juliet's broadcast programmes includes an actor clearly saying "fuck", it has just as much drama - and awful consequence - as any of the war stuff. 

It's a wrily funny read, one constant theme Juliet's frustrated sex life. Her perspective full of pithy observations as she moves through the large cast of vividly drawn characters, many burdened with tragedy but doing their best to get on.

"How little it takes to make some people happy, Juliet thought. And how much it takes for others." (p. 231)

Amid all this activity, this life, are some deftly placed clues to what's really going on - such as one character's caual thieving - which I didn't think to put together spot until very late. It's especially clever because often we're ahead of Juliet, spotting one character's sexuality before she has to have it explained. Only in the last section do we realise what the book is actually about. In fact, the one jarring moment is when Atkinson acknowledges that with a wink at the reader:

"Come now, quite enough exposition and explanation. We're not approaching the end of a novel, Miss Armstrong." (p. 315 - 14 pages from the end)

The final revelation only makes me want to read the whole thing again straight away. It's so deceptively simple, such a pleasure to knock through, so rewarding at the end. A joy.

Doctor Who Magazine #530

Doctor Who Magazine #530 is now available in shops and online. It includes my interview with musician Christian Erickson about how 1984 Doctor Who story The Caves of Androzani inspired his new album, The Caves - which I've been listening to a lot over the past few months.

The issue also includes a preview of The Women Who Lived, my new Doctor Who book which is out this week, and a nice review of The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles, which includes my latest Doctor Who audio play.

This issue of Doctor Who Magazine is also available as a deluxe edition exclusive to WHSmith, the goodies including a Doctor Who audio adventure from Big Finish (I'm afraid there's a risk you'll end up with one of mine) and a postcard of Lee Binding's cover art for The Women Who Lived.

I'll be signing the book later this week - at Forbidden Planet in London on Friday evening from 6 pm and at Forbidden Planet in Bristol on Saturday afternoon from 1 pm - along with my co-author Christel Dee and some of the artists involved.

And you can win a copy of the book by paying careful attention to this interview with me and Christel conducted by Phil Hawkins: