In dystopian fiction, the authorities rarely take sensible steps to avoid society spiralling towards disaster. The landmark social media ban for under 16s may or may not have the desired effect, but any escape from our performance society is desirable.
If you’d like to know what The Undoing of Arlo Knott is about and why I wrote it, you can find out by listening to the audio clip above. As first played by Caroline Martin on BBC Radio Somerset at 8:20am Sunday 6th July 2025. Available on BBC Sounds until early August. Find out more…
It’s been a strange year – one of those authors go through sometimes – in which novel-writing has been slow or tricky, and instead I’ve done what I term the ‘marginalia’ of a writer’s life – other things that around the margins of writing actual books. So this year, I’ve been a mentor on the…
Having enjoyed researching Isambard Kingdom Brunel for The People’s Republic of Love, I thought I’d take a rare venture into micro fiction, just to capture this fleeting yet fascinating episode in his life (a true story).
Most of the time authors carefully choose their settings, but sometimes the story just revs its engine and takes you off who-knows-where. Hence I found, completely by accident, this one little scene in The Undoing of Arlo Knott taking place at an old workplace of mine – Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham.
