My earliest writing memory dates from my very first
day at school. I was given an exercise book and wrote my name in the
appropriate space on the cover without being told to. For that simple act, I
was promoted a year and spent the rest of my primary school career being the
youngest in the class. In order to write, I must have been able to read, but
the first book I actually remember was
Then I moved on to Birkenhead School and discovered Arthur
Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons in the library
there. I have been an avid Ransomite ever since.
Indeed, like many claim (including Ellen MacArthur), reading Ransome inspired me to get on the water and sail boats for
myself. I have all his books, fiction and non-fiction, as well as Hugh Brogan’s
excellent biography and other Ransome-related
works.
Throughout my schooldays I wrote what I now know to be
short stories and received appraisals from my teachers ranging from ‘this is
silly’ to ‘brilliant, but writing not fit for a pig sty.’ I’m not sure whether
the latter referred to my text or my handwriting. I also read stuff like Dennis
Wheatley and Dornford Yates (yeah, so what?) then
university (although I majored in history and geography) made me rediscover
writers I’d refused to appreciate before: Shakespeare, Dickens, the Brontës, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy. I began to enjoy poetry
– Shakespeare and Hardy, Swinburne, and modern(ish)
poets like Philip Larkin and Laurie Lee.
I’m not a
fantasy fan but like many of my generation I was enthralled by Tolkien’s The
Lord of the Rings. My tastes now are pretty catholic. Some novels I admire
are: Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time (I have all 12
volumes); Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness
of Being; A.S. Byatt Possession; Georges Perec Life: a User’s Manual. In a lighter vein, I
like anything by P.G. Wodehouse or E.F. Benson.
I used to
feel cheated by short stories but then I read those of A.E. Coppard
and H.E. Bates and realised what I’d been missing. Now I’m hooked, I devour
shorts as if they were chocolate bars. I still admire Coppard
and Bates but I’ve discovered so many more literary heroes: Raymond Carver (a
super-hero), William Trevor (a close second), John Cheever, John Updike,
Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and so many others. Writers such as these seem
like gods but I console myself by supposing that their early works were no
better than mine. Maybe.