Voltaire and Vaccinations…

March 8, 2021

Perhaps it stems from having more time on one’s hands, or from a desire to look back to more certain and carefree days, but lately I’ve found my thoughts drifting back to my years as a Modern Languages undergraduate. More specifically, to my second year – a fabulously easygoing time for any linguist. The dreaded […]

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New year… new book…

December 1, 2020

While exciting things have been happening on the Spike Sanguinetti TV front — two scripts of the TV series have now been written — I’ve been working on a different sort of book altogether, a historical adventure novel set in the febrile world of Victorian planthunting. It won’t be published until Spring 2022, and the […]

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Epilogue to a grave-hunting mission…

August 6, 2020

A while back I posted an article from the Bucks Free Press which quoted an account I’d written about going to find my great uncle’s grave in Bangladesh. Here it is (below), but in summary — My great uncle Lewis died in WW2 in the Far East, and my grandfather (his younger brother) had long […]

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American correspondence…

November 21, 2019

There’s something reassuringly old-fashioned about receiving a reader’s letter forwarded by your publisher. And when that letter comes from the USA, it adds an extra spritz of excitement. So it was with much anticipation that I opened this envelope (below), then read of a man who’d purchased 4 of the 5 Spike books in their […]

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High times at ‘High Life’…

August 30, 2019

British Airways flights are rare birds in the Mogford household these days, but an aunt of mine who prefers to stick to traditional carriers spotted this snippet in the summer edition of ‘High Life Magazine’. Good to see Spike nuzzling up next to John Le Carre here (I imagine him with his head on the […]

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More boozy writing…

June 22, 2019

… I hope the commissioning editor is not trying to tell me something — Putting on the Spritz: Digby Fine English

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French country-house mystery…

May 27, 2019

If ever there was a good location for an old-fashioned, country-house murder-mystery, it was surely this. Will keep it filed away in the mind… In the meantime, here’s an article on cider-making —   When Cider Got Sassy  

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Prosecco fun…

March 30, 2019

It’s a measure of the strange times we’re living in that something as inoffensive as Prosecco should have become freighted with political significance. Perhaps it was Boris Johnson alleging that free-trade deals would be easy to come by as the Italians would never want to jeopardise their Prosecco sales. Maybe it was Theresa May hosting […]

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Gamekeeper turned poacher…

February 5, 2019

I first met Sarah Ward six years ago, when she was working as a book blogger, reviewing countless crime novels, and specialising in Scandinavian noir in particular. Unbeknownst to those she was so sensitively reviewing, Sarah was also plotting her own crime series, which is now well underway (4 novels and counting), and has been […]

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What’s in a name…

December 5, 2018

Every December, the installation of our Christmas tree necessitates various items of furniture being brought up from the sitting room to my study.This has a knock-on effect of forcing me to shift around the many piles of books and papers that clutter the floor. And this in turn led to me stumbling upon this old […]

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