

How Narnia Became a Fully-Fledged World
In class at school, in 1971, I sat next to a girl I’d never spoken to and had no real intention of getting to know. During a reading...


Who is the Hero of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?
​ The opening line of the novel is a telling one: When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. ...


The Quality of Faerie
In 1975, my English teacher, one Mr. Sweeting, came up with the idea of a reading list from which we (his unforgiving class of...


The Perfect Companion Arc of Sarah Jane Smith
For me, the Golden Age of Doctor Who stretches from the beginnings of the show in 1963 right through to the moment that Sarah Jane Smith...


Marvel Comics and Movies: Why DC can never emulate Marvel's film success
​Stan Lee, so the story goes, was thinking about getting out of the whole business of comic books back in the late 1950s. He’d worked his...


Lewis, the Wardrobe and the Police Box
If, like me, you tend to read a great deal of significance into things, it won’t have escaped your notice that C. S. Lewis died about an...


My Favourite Place in Middle-earth
Middle-earth is a large and wonderful place, full of rivers and mountains and plains and giant forests, dotted with ancient cities and...


A Reading of 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens
Apart from being a good example of an Irony -and you can read much more about Ironies in How Stories Really Work - Charles Dickens’...


Should you change what you're doing? If so, how?
I get to talk to a lot of writers. In 2020, there was much discussion amongst them of the worldwide pandemic and how that might or might...