Here’s a confession. When I was a child, I used to think that Dusty Springfield was singing, “You don’t have to say you love me, just because a ham.” This made no sense to me, of course. If an adult had challenged me on it – “Just because a ham?”…
Continue Reading…

The case of the 18th-century man of letters John Hawkesworth (1715?-1773) is not as often invoked as it ought to be. This is perhaps because no one has heard of him. Search books of notable Georgians in England, and alphabetically they go straight from Hawke to Haydon. Even in Boswell’s…
Continue Reading…

You are best known for Eats, Shoots & Leaves – looking at your all-encompassing CV is that something you are happy with? Well, it’s hard sometimes. I wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves 14 years ago – but I think it’s fair that if you have a bestselling book, people identify…
Continue Reading…

These questions were put to me when the second series of A Certain Age went out in 2005. You will see there were a couple of questions I didn’t answer. 1. Did you find it difficult writing about men and examining relationships from a man’s point of view? I think…
Continue Reading…

In the 1980s, when the BBC arts department spent several years putting together a history of the theatre (presented by Ronald Harwood), it was worth phoning the production office just to hear the unenthusiastic tone of the person answering. He had evidently not left his desk in three years. “All…
Continue Reading…

From a piece about radio, written for The Sunday Times in 2005 Having just written a series of monologues for Radio 4 (my third such series), I will admit that it’s mainly a sophisticated form of self-torture, and it may be time to see a specialist, because the constraints of…
Continue Reading…