Tell us about your new book.

‘Well, hello there! My new publishing adventure is called Bond, Queer Bond – The Fabulous Other History of a Spy! It is a wholly original, unique and sometimes bold chronicle about the vital LGBTQ artistry, decisions and creativity that helped forge and steer the openly straight James Bond – onscreen, on the big screen and beyond. It has grown into a beautiful work that also features some vital Bond and gay names who really open out the discoveries and lost histories of 007 in often surprising and poignant ways. I wanted to do a new Bond book. But more importantly, I wanted to address how LGBTQ rights, progressions and publications are being thrown under various political buses for performative bigotries. There was suddenly no better knight of British culture than 007, and that felt like a good moment and filter to outline some lost queer histories – whilst surprise Bond fan folk with the real contexts to the properties and Bond tropes they hold dear. Ultimately, if a history is not complete because it has sidelined queer timelines and people, can it really then claim to be history?’

Who is your favourite writer and why?

‘As I journeyed through Bond, Queer Bond and discovered so much more about 007 creator Ian Fleming and his writer’s mind and mid-century pedestal, I could easily cite him on so many levels. However, a writer whose era, eye, voice and observations I continue to hold both vital and dear is Armistead Maupin.

As a gay teen I emerged into the mid 1990s seeing a UK press framing homosexuals with such performative bigotry. I would have the footage of dying angels in AIDS wards abandoned by their families or a brave lone mum clutching onto emaciated bedside hope as my only LGBTQ representation. We didn’t have Heated Rivalry. We had terrifying TV info-warnings about AIDS and the dangers of unprotected sex with an iceberg. And then there is Maupin and Tales of the City.

Whilst the 1980s tsunami of HIV/AIDS was very pinned to San Francisco, here is an out gay voice detailing like a Castro Dickens all the communities, foibles, relationships, momentums and unabashed sexuality of gay life in San Francisco in the late 1970s. It was not about warnings. It was about conversations, cool people and life. The first couple of books and the subsequent TV adaptation were vital signifiers of a happy, out, sexual, complicated queer world. It created a fascination and a wholly personal relationship with San Francisco for me. I wanted to know about Harvey Milk, and those ’taches and those topless boot-cut denim boys flanking the late night TV documentaries I would sneak-watch in my bedroom at 1am via Channel Four.

And then when Bond, Queer Bond comes full circle with its San Francisco findings alongside real queer world iconography I felt a certain Maupin duty to get those personalities and histories correct. He always has such skill at depicting the gay condition across the generations now but makes it universal. And never angry.

One of my happiest life beats was walking with a coffee in hand through the Castro with my husband as we realised the man nursing his own latte on another pavement coffee bench was Armistead himself. And then three minutes later on the same sidewalk we pass Cleve Jones and that direct, passionate link to Harvey Milk and SF’s sense of queer fight and activism. Suddenly, the cute boys with their ’taches holding hands on the sidewalk was more about me than AIDS warnings and icebergs. I thank Maupin for giving me not only a gay Oz, but also a second home with a history I hold very dear. Maupin’s writing is more than a document. It is a mindful template for gay life in a straight world.’

What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

‘I remember when I was starting out as a screenwriter – and writing comedy, short and feature scripts and having some production success – that there is a pile of ‘how to’ books out there and vying for my attention, from ‘screenwriting gurus’ who only ever wrote an episode of Kojak but made a name for themselves as script legends for writing self-help screenwriting books but never scripts. I was so glad to be warned off them. It made me realise just writing a script or a scene and finishing it via my instinct and momentum was the only way.

The sole piece of advice that may have partly instigated my first book Catching Bullets – Memoir of a Bond Fan (2012) was a cliché, but wholly true – write what you know. We do not all write to meet deadlines and manuscript word counts. But if you write knowing what your unique selling point is and why only your voice is the one that can tell a story, create a character world or recount that beat of history, then the work has a better chance of holding greater resonance and quality. And reality.’

Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

‘There are loads of unread glories! I am a terrible reader. It is always this time of early summer when I start thinking about the US and a vacation – which then makes me do my annual brain announcement of wanting to read and know more of the beat poets.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles held great fascination as a teen as we would holiday around Thomas Hardy’s Dorset. It is also a shopping list of grief and tragedy, but without Dickens’ sense of social commentary and that slight humour regarding poverty and bad luck. Hardy just piles on the PTSD, starves it, has it married off against its will in the next county, sees it lose a baby in some stream and then has everyone die young of consumption. Without any food. I rarely felt Hardy was one of the people he actually wrote about. At least Wuthering Heights gets a Kate Bush makeover.’

What’s your signature dinner party dish?

‘So, in recent years, and partly because I had to make use of a cute cake tier stand I whim-bought, I have become family known for my egg mayonnaise sandwich fingers and high teas! I have also accidentally and rather singlehandedly brought back the sherry trifle in recent times – which is basically just nursery food for toddlers – so I now get asked for my martini glass trifles and the ‘recipe’ at a dinner soiree. Suddenly, my Roger Moore fandom makes total late 1970s sense when it comes to my signature dish… a boozy trifle and egg mayo sarnies.’

If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

‘It all depends on if they are cool with sherry trifle! Gosh, this is a list that forever changes. Okay, in no order of rank or brilliance… Kathy Burke – because of her intelligence, humanity and attitude, the gay politician and rights icon. Harvey Milk – because he accidentally made a pasty assed boy from Surrey, England fall in love with a gay village and community of communities and knew how to bring disparate souls together to many a table. Paul O’Grady – who I may well have had future dinner party seating luck as we had great mutual pals who miss him dearly, but who once beguiled me at a lock-in at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and I always wanted to host him for dinner and lap up more of his devil does not care brilliance. The screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz – who had the best eye and ear for making hard script concepts like Bond and Superman totally work, and Bond author Ian Fleming – just so I can seat him amongst the others and watch them all collectively marvel at the martini trifles and tales of old Vauxhall and the tenderloin.’

What keeps you awake at night?

‘I had to realise recently that the rise of right-wing bigotry and fascism during a recent local election cycle did get me concerned. And the concern usually hit me in the early hours when I would get anxious that any conversation I was having about it would always be met with ‘it is just politics, you need to not worry’. But it is not my politics. Oh that it could just be that. It is my rights, my equalities, my social standing and my community. Jonathan Harvey says LGBTQ folk are always the canary in the mine. And I feel that in a world of more renewable energy and less fossil fuel, the gay fight has still to get into the coal mines and defend ourselves in the dark to those that have never had to ever think their lives are less ring-fenced or safeguarded than mine. I sometimes get asked ‘now that you have A, B and C, what is the next thing gay folk need to be mindful of and fight against?’ I always, always say… complacency.’

Tell us a joke OR tell us a secret.

‘I am currently loving the gay comic Matteo Lane so would only steal from him right now. Okay, this will sound like a book plug, but one of the great and somewhat sexy finds of my research journey on Bond, Queer Bond was that the gay porn world was always way ahead of the pop-culture curve. There is a whole collection of very underground, very vintage and very hirsute gay porn titles that steal from Bond, steal the existing soundtracks and have their own guns and dicks title sequences. And no one quite knows about them. Yet. Maybe Ian Fleming would be okay if we ended our dinner party night watching some! I would certainly kill to hear the other guests all start a running commentary together.’

Bond, Queer Bond – The Fabulous Other History of a Spy is published by The History Press

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He is a Lambda Award finalist and Leicestershire Short Story Prize winner.

His stories have been featured on BBC Radio 4, and in various anthologies.

1) Tell us about your latest book.

‘Saltburn is a collection of six queer (and bonkers) love stories. It’s nothing to do with the film, but the seaside town where my dad was from in the north-east of England. My Saltburn has a nuclear power station that melts down, a mermaid who works in a penny arcade, an aquarium with no fish that becomes a symbol of gay pride, a man who changes into a woman (and back again) every 12 hours, and a soldier in a dress who finds love in the desert. But behind all the craziness are us little people just trying to get by in the face of hypocritical governance and big business muscling in and taking over.’

2) Who is your favourite writer and why?

‘Can I choose two? I am currently listening to Ian Fleming’s Bond collection again. These books take me back to my childhood holidays camping in the South of France. I get that they are terribly racist, sexist, homophobic but Bond is a genius creation and Fleming had a brilliant eye for writing thrilling scenes.

American short story writer George Saunders is my second choice. He’s a superstar now but I’ve loved him since seeing the cover of Pastoralia in Waterstones, buying the book on the back of it, and then being in awe. That’s what I want to do, I thought, absurd stories with heart.’

3) What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

‘Ha! Well I’ve written my own writing guide that is full of the most terrible writing advice. It’s called You: From Pissed to Publication and the character You (who first appeared in my book Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel) has become my writing alter ago here on Substack too, appearing occasionally in my posts with his sharp eye on the publishing industry.

For the best writing advice I’ll go back to George Saunders. Look at your story, he says, line by line and ask yourself the question, is it giving me pleasure? If not, change it. If yes, move forward. Repeat this, on and on.’

4) Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

‘The answer to both these questions is anything by Kafka. I have started pretty much all his books and never finished them. I even have the audiobook of Metamorphosis in French which I listen to sometimes before giving up, not being able to understand French.

He is the most over-rated, not because the quality of his writing is poor but because comparisons to him are so overused. How many books are described as Kafaesque? I mean, they can’t all be.’

5) What’s your signature dinner party dish?

‘I have never attended or given a dinner party. At the thought of someone coming over to dinner my mind immediately turns to faking my own death or booking into a hotel. This is the actual truth. I’ve had counselling for the past year. I was trying to find out why I find social situations so problematic. Saying that, I like cooking, Radio 6 on, then a glass of wine and a film.’

6) If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

‘The answer to the above question makes answering this a tough one. But if I didn’t have to be involved, maybe I could be in a nook, checking in coats, be able to listen in. So… I love passion that people have for things. David Hockney, he still has such enthusiasm and has had such a life. Tom Cruise because my next book is about him (in a way). Harris Dickinson, because he’s at the beginning of his career and I think he could learn a lot from those two. Michael Parkinson, because you’d need to have someone to guide the conversation, give people space, and my dad, because he hasn’t been alive for a long old while and I think he’d appreciate a night out. Although dad would probably ask where all the women are. “You brought me back for this?”’

7) What keeps you awake at night?

‘I’m a terrible sleeper. I fall asleep in minutes, usually listening to Hound of the Baskervilles or some other Sherlock Holmes story but then I wake up just a few hours later. My writing has been compared to Kurt Vonnegut’s (very flatteringly!) and his sketches, how he goes over and over certain situations. And that’s what my mind does at night. It goes around and around a situation – and that can be anything – changing the variables, adding bits, taking them away.

Having not slept I’d like to sleep in but Will Self got it spot on. Like him I have a Sgt. Major in my head telling me to get my ass out of bed, I’ve got things to do. I am usually writing by 6, when I’m writing, and done by 9 or 10. This works for me. It gives me the whole day free to come up with excuses not to attend the dinner parties I might be invited to if anyone might desire my company.’

8) Tell us a joke OR Tell us a secret.

‘I have been writing funny stories for 40 years – I started with my fictional detective Tod Towski in the school magazine – but the secret is I’m not funny at all, not in person. Which is why I don’t get invited to those dinner parties. Who would want to sit next to me? Haha!’

Saltburn is published by Renard Press

VG Lee is the award-winning author of six novels and two short story collections. Her latest novel Our Shadow Selves is published by Muswell Press.

Tell us about your new book.

‘Our Shadow Selves represents a change of direction in my writing. I’ve always concentrated on the best in my characters, their endearing traits. Now I want to look at the other side of the coin, experiences that have made a change, both good and bad. Each of the four main characters in my novel have endured difficult journeys. Two of them survive, two of them don’t.’

Who is your favourite writer and why?

‘I believe most favourite authors let their readers down at some point. But Elizabeth Strout is reliable. Ishiguro is unreliable but when on my wavelength, terrific. At the moment I’m re-reading Radclyffe Hall’s The Unlit Lamp for about the fifth time. It still has something to say about devastating parental relationships. Sarah Waters has never let me down. Her The Little Stranger carried me through a very challenging couple of weeks some years ago, when I was attempting to be funny at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.’

What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

‘The best writing tip is one many of us use: if you’re stuck, start with, ‘I remember…’

For me at the start of my writing career when I was still going to writing workshops, the worst tip or prompt was to write about the tutor’s ‘found objects’. My heart would sink. Always sea shells, or a particular dry grass, or stones. Oh yes, and feathers.’

Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

‘Ulysses, James Joyce.

Anything by James Joyce.’

What’s your signature dinner party dish?

‘Macaroni cheese with a side portion of well-grilled bacon.’

If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

‘Paul Robeson for his voice and how I sense him to have been as a person. Thora Hird because she always asked for me to serve her during the 1970s, when she visited the trousers-suit shop I managed in Lancaster Gate. Maggi Hambling, so I could ask her just what was the creative thinking involved for her statue of Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, which looks as if MW is emerging from a gigantic piping bag. Jasmine Harman, co-presenter of A Place in the Sun, because she appears delightful in every way. Finally, the film star Tom Cruise, because in my eyes he is a proper film star and he was great in Collateral which I’ve watched and enjoyed many times.’

What keeps you awake at night?

‘My cat Claudia. She walks back and forth across my face and likes to pat my nose and eyelashes… with her claws.’

Tell us a secret.

‘From this moment on, no longer a secret, but I’ve just finished the M&S chocolate hippo I’d bought as an Easter gift for my friend Micra Mary!’

Our Shadow Selves is published by Muswell Press

VG Lee will be appearing at Polari at Tunbridge Wells Lit Fest on May 6

His short stories have appeared in anthologies, journals and newspapers, and have been read on BBC Radio3, 4 and 5, RTE Radio, as well as Sky ARTS. His writing has been translated into eight languages.

His short story collection, I Hear You, was published in March 2025.

1) Tell us about your latest book.

‘I Hear You is a collection of short stories that were commissioned by BBC Radio 4. There are three stand alone tales, including ‘Daddy Christmas’ which aired on Christmas Day.’

2) Who is your favourite writer and why?

‘I have many. I loved classic Dickens because of his focus on the hardships of the poor and his characters – sometimes haunting and sometimes hilarious. I love the dairies of the Anais Nin they’re so beautiful, fearless and exposing.’

3) What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

‘Best writing tip I got was “keep your overheads low” LOL. Honestly, it will help you fundamentally if you choose the writing life. There’s been a reaction against the “write what you know” school of thought and I don’t agree with that advice. Personally, writing what I know, especially as a launchpad, gives my work strong foundations.’

4) Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

‘Many, many, I’m afraid. War and Peace springs to mind for no particular reason. As for over-rated, maybe I’m getting old and looking back with rose-tinted glasses and have weeded out the ones I didn’t rate from my memory because I can’t think of one.’

5) What’s your signature dinner party dish?

‘I don’t go to parties, I’m very dull! I’m a one-on-one kind of guy. I love cooking for someone, love watching them eat food I cooked for them. My grandmother was Italian so we had classic Italian dishes several times a week, every week. So, although a staple of everyone, I’d say my bolognaise is a banger.’

6) If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

‘Victoria Wood – I think she made me laugh more than anyone else, ever.

Julie Walters – as above, and can you imagine listening to these two reminiscing and slipping in and out of characters?

Frank Capra and Billy Wilder – my two favourite directors/screenwriters. I’d want to hear all their stories of old Hollywood and making some of the greatest movies committed to film.

I’d have to say though that, thinking about it, that if I had that power to invite living or dead guests, the most important guest would be my brother Alex, to hear his laugh one more time.’

7) What keeps you awake at night?

‘Everything! I’m a terrible sleeper. I go over fights I had on the school bus when I was 11.’

8) Tell us a joke / Tell us a secret.

‘I wrote for stand-ups for about 10 years when I moved to London, but the irony was I couldn’t remember a joke. Not one!

A secret... When I was 15, I became a bingo caller and an old lady who came every week and sat in the front row offered me a bribe to let her win.’

I Hear You is published by Salt.

Paul McVeigh appears at A Very Polari Xmas Dec 10 at The Printworks, Hastings.

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Her poetry collection What Girls Do in the Dark (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021. Her latest novel, The Fates (Quercus) is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates, and her first collection of short fiction Your Sons and Your Daughters Are Beyond is published by Fly On The Wall Press.

In 2023, she was made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today.

1) Tell us about your latest books

‘2025 has been quite a year! In January, Fly on the Wall Press published my first collection of short fiction, Your Sons And Your Daughters Are Beyond. With themes of transformation, rebellion, and otherness, the title story features teenagers transforming into wild animals with supernatural abilities.

Then in June, my new poetry collection, This Is How I Fight was published by Nine Arches Press. It features poems of danger and unknowing, wildness and strangeness, myth and magic through a queer perspective. Poems shift between human and other, looking to where we might find courage and proposing kindness as a radical act. And if that weren’t enough, it was The Observer Poetry Book of the Month for June 2025!

I love small presses and the personal attention and care they can bring to a book. The way they go the extra mile for their authors. Fly on the Wall is the brainchild of Isabelle Kenyon, a true force of nature. As for Nine Arches Press – it’s my dream poetry publisher. They have a wonderfully diverse list, including a wealth of LGBTQ+ poets – James McDermott, Troy Cabida, Caleb Parkin, Kostya Tsolakis – and of course, yours truly.’

2) Who is your favourite writer and why?

‘Where do I begin! I get asked this a lot and still haven’t come up with a clever answer. Walt Whitman said ‘I contain multitudes.’ That includes the books I love.

Maybe the ‘why’ is easier than the ‘who’. I’m thinking of books that have been companions through difficult and lonely times, books that have thrilled and challenged, and – crucially - inspired me to write.

It might sound weird, but fairytales got me writing. A very early memory is of my grandmother reading fairy stories. I discovered the joy of being transported to other worlds via the magic of words. It wasn’t long before I started telling my own tales, starting with books created for my dolls.’

3) What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

‘A favourite for down-to-earth advice is Tom Clancy: ‘Tell the damn story’. As a writer of historical fiction, it’s very tempting to spend more time researching than getting on with the writing itself! Sure, I have to research the period diligently. It’s equally vital to know when to stop. The way I see it, the art of good research is when the reader barely notices its presence, only that everything feels right. Personally, I don’t care if an arrow is fletched with swan feather, eagle feather or magpie feather. I want to know who is shooting it, who dies, and why I should care.

As for one of the worst tips: ‘write what you know.’ What does that even mean? Write what you know emotionally? Or to restrict yourself to writing about people who look, think and act the same as you? How ridiculous. And boring. I prefer ‘write what you want to know.’’

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4) Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

‘Never got around to War and Peace. I love Dostoyevsky, but Tolstoy leaves me cold.

Sadly, I didn’t get on with Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend. I adored The Secret History and couldn’t wait for her next. There are many passionate fans of The Little Friend, but I’m not one of them. Hundreds of pages, and then… nothing. It practically ends mid-sentence, as though she suddenly realised she’d written 600 pages and had to run for a train.’

5) What’s your signature dinner party dish?

‘Will it come as a surprise that I’m not a domestic goddess? Didn’t think so. OK, I can roast a chicken without setting the house on fire. Just about. However, my signature dish is along the lines of ‘Why don’t we go to that marvellous Italian restaurant we love?’’

6) If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

‘Argh, this is one of those trick questions where all the Cool Kids say David Bowie! And why not? However, he’s busy at a thousand other fantasy dinner parties so I’ll leave him in peace.

To begin with, dinner will have to be at that gorgeous Italian restaurant mentioned above, as there’s no way I’m cooking.

Four guests are picked from my extensive list of inspirational she-roes: Siouxsie Sioux, Polly Styrene, Patti Smith and Pauline Black. Every one of them burst free of culturally and socially acceptable modes of gender and sexuality, disrupting ideas of what women – particularly women in bands – could and should be. If they could do it, why shouldn’t I? Result – I got onstage and sang in a punk band that’s still going!

What moves and humbles me is the realisation I have become a scary gothmother for others. I’m deeply affected by the number of gender non-binary and young queer folk who approach me after gigs and tell me how I’ve made a positive difference in their lives. How simply being an out performer and writer has given a sense of permission to unlock and unleash their own queer expression. I had no idea I had – or could have – that impact on others. It’s intensely heartening and life-affirming. We never know who has seen or heard our work, never know for whom it’s shone a beacon.

My fifth and final guest is my mum. She’s been gone for over 20 years. There are so many questions I never got to ask, so many things I wish I’d said but never did. A dinner party isn’t anywhere near long enough to tell her how much she meant to me, but it’s a start.’

7) What keeps you awake at night?

‘Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be aware of the mind-boggling and frankly terrifying rise of the extreme right and resulting erosion of our rights. If anyone out there (LGBTQ+ or not) isn’t concerned, then they’re deluding themselves – or are rich enough to think they won’t be affected.’

8) Tell us a joke

‘There are many great comedians out there, pushing against the overwhelming sludge of bigotry. Here’s a current favourite: Dan Docimo, with his sketch ‘Corinthians’ (click on the pinned post). You’re welcome!’

His work has been celebrated by Yinka Shonibare, Alison Bechdel and Meshell Ndegeocello amongst other cultural luminaries, and has been taught at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, SOAS, King’s College and Cambridge, amongst other universities and schools around the world. 

Diriye lives in London.

1) Tell us about your latest book

‘My last book was called The Butterfly Jungle, and it was published by Team Angelica Press in 2022. It’s about an ebullient gay British-Somali man and his gloriously queer family in Peckham, South London. I had a blast writing this collection of interlinked stories because it’s funny and dark and passionate. I highly recommend it! But the book of mine which tends to hit people in the heart the most is Fairytales for Lost Children. Entire small communities have come together because of the latter text, which is a startling thing to consider, but it makes me happy.’

2) Who is your favourite writer and why?

‘My favourite writer is Alison Bechdel. I remember exactly where I was when I read Dykes to Watch Out For. Her vision of an interconnected queer community is so pluralistic and loving and precise. She’s just fabulous and I will happily wolf down anything she creates.’

3) What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

‘The best writing advice I’ve received is to use everything without leaving casualties on the page. Compassion melded with discernment matters. The worst writing advice was to never use exclamation points. I don’t use exclamation points often, but my god, they’re fun. Hahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

4) Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

‘I’ve never read War and Peace because I’ve lived through civil war, and my baseline philosophy is to never go sniffing for struggle. This might sound weird, but I’ve never come across a classic novel and thought, “This is overrated.” The classics I’ve read have always added value to my life. I highly recommend Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood for anyone who hasn’t read it. I gobbled it down as a teenager and thought it was dripping with irony and a vivifying clarity about the realities experienced by Igbo women in Nigeria.’

5) What’s your signature dinner party dish?

‘I don’t cook. Someone cooks for me. But dinner parties at my house are always a delicious celebration.’

6) If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

‘Nina Simone, Grace Jones, Divine, John Waters and Bernie Mac. Now that is a lineup and I know it would be a fun and festive party.’ 

7) What keeps you awake at night?

‘I sleep like a baby. Whatever shitstorm is whooshing down, it’ll simply have to wait until business hours.’

8) Tell us a joke.

‘I’ll tell you a joke cribbed from 30 Rock. “Oh, I can play dead. I watched my whole church group get eaten by a bear.”’

Fairytales for Lost Children and The Butterfly Jungle are published by Team Angelica

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Jake Arnott is the author of eight novels. His bestselling debut The Long Firm was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was adapted as a BAFTA award-winning BBC drama. His latest, Blood Rival, a psychological thriller based on the Oedipus myth, is a Times Book of the Month for October 2025, where it was described it as “viscerally entertaining.”

1) Tell us about your new book.

Blood Rival is a Greek myth re-imagined as a psychological thriller. A gangland drama set in contemporary Kent based on real events, with the names changed to protect the guilty. A brutal act of road rage sets off a lethal power struggle. Jo, a villain’s widow and her new young lover Eddie fight for survival as they struggle to solve a mystery that could destroy them both. It’s a fast-paced, propulsive crime story with all the big themes you find in classical tragedy: revenge, betrayal, family secrets, fatal ambition and forbidden love. Think Sophocles meets The Sopranos.

2) Who is your favourite writer and why?

Shakespeare. He just does it all for me and works on so many levels: the intimate and the epic, the classical and the popular, the balance between plot and character. His drama still works four hundred years on, it still has something to say to us.

3) What are the best and worst writing tips you’ve ever heard?

Well, the worst for me was always ‘write what you know.’ It seemed so limiting. Because I’ve never been sure what I know, to be honest. Writing for me was always something of a journey into the unknown. That’s still the reason I do it.

The best advice is not to take anybody’s advice. Follow your own instincts. The only real advice I give is to ‘be lucky.’ Allow for random (and possibly fateful) interventions in your work. And in your life, for that matter.

4) Which classic novel have you never got around to reading? And which one do you consider over-rated?

Every two years or so I try to get through Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parsival, a 13th century grail epic that was the blockbuster of its day (think Star Wars meets Game of Thrones.) It’s a wonderful book, full of astonishing moments but so dense and discursive that I usually give up around page 100.

I’ve always found Henry James over-rated. I find him ponderous and inconsequential. Somebody once said: “He chewed more than he bit off.” But maybe I should give him another try.

5) What’s your signature dinner party dish?

When cuttlefish is in season, I make a black risotto (Catalans call this arròs negre, though their version is more like a paella). The cuttlefish and its ink have an incredibly rich flavour and look spectacularly blue-black on a white plate. Best served with a piquant alioli.

6) If you could invite five people living or dead to a dinner party, who would you invite and why?

I’ve been lucky enough to have dinner with John Cooper Clarke, he’s one of the funniest and most articulate people I know and always such sublime entertainment. The rest would be brilliant ghosts: Sappho, James Baldwin, David Bowie and Tallulah Bankhead.

7) What keeps you awake at night?

Ideas. Given my guilty conscience I sleep surprisingly well, but it’s ideas that wake me in the wee small hours. They’re usually not very good ones (dreamtime often exaggerates casual thoughts into epiphanies) but I’m obliged to get up and note them down, just in case. It’s an occupational hazard.

8) Tell us a joke.

This is one of my dad’s (he grew up in the music hall and he’d give it that delivery)

A man goes into a chemists and asks for talcum powder. The chemist says: “Certainly sir, walk this way.” The man replies: “If I could walk that way I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.”

Blood Rival is published by Datura Books

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