C.M. Collingwood
A country childhood was followed by years in cities, but then those roots, that I had never dug up, pulled me back to rural parts. I am happiest surrounded by fields and woods, with the sea not far away. I live in an ancient farmhouse surrounded by a garden made from a few acres of bramble, nettle and other very persistent matter. I think I’m winning. And I work in a converted Piggery overlooking a pond, that I would like to call a lake but can’t.
I trained to be a dancer, but that dream ended with an accident. I changed direction and went after life in Academe. I lived in Italy for a while, travelled all over, then settled in London, working as a freelance Art and Film historian. I maintain close links with the film business while diverting into another direction, with novels. When not working, I idle on the swing - the best problem solving place - walk, swim, garden and spend time with my family and friends.
Music runs through BLUE STONES, BLACK ROCK. It is very easy to get up any piece on Youtube and have a look, as well as a listen.
Next off the production line has a working title:
Day of Wrath
It is set in a future which looks like the past. A radical take on Beauty and the Beast.
The Best Book Shelf
I collect books. They furnish many rooms. They could be holding the house up, but there is a particular shelf in my Piggery that has the special books which are always a delight. They teach me and inspire me. They are the best.
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
1859
THE great mystery, sensation, gothic and detective novel. It is beautifully plotted and gripping to read, even for the umpteenth time. To be with the resourcerful Marion Halcombe as she triumphs over the master criminal Count Fosco, is a punch in the air moment.
Georgette Heyer - These Old Shades
1926
I love Heyer’s sparkling wit and rather sly re-creation of a Regency world, always with a heroine who is anything but submissive. These Old Shades is my favourite, with the cheeky, charming, cross dressing Leonie.
The Brontes - Emily's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte's Jane Eyre
December 1847 & October 1847
These sit with the two greats inspired by the latter novel, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which gives a voice to the first ‘mad’ wife and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938), the second ‘mousy’ one. All shades of love are in these page turners, from the uptight, silent and unspoken to the all out, un bridled fever pitch. Haunted women in haunted houses in haunted landscapes.
Thomas Mann - Death in Venice
1912
The passion of an elderly man for a beautiful boy. A love that is as much cerebral as it is earthy. A yearning for something that can never be. Luchino Visconti made a great film of it, complemented by Mahler’s music.
Alain-Fournier - Le Grand Meaulnes or The Wanderer
1912
A boy finds a mysteriously beautiful house and a mysteriously beautiful girl, only to lose them. A novel about adolescence and enchantment.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard
1958
Sicily in 1860, at a time of war and change. The fabulous world of Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, hangs in the balance. Again, Visconti made a film to match.
Patrick Leigh Fermor - A Time Of Gifts & Between the Woods and Water
1977 & 1986
‘Like a tramp, a prilgrim, or a wandering scholar’ an eighteen year old boy set out, one wet december morning in 1933, to walk across Europe. PLF wrote these memoirs years later, having lost his notebooks. So, extraordinary recall or elaborated fact? No matter … A vanished era is conjured up.
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber and other Stories
1979
The complete works, but if I have to single out just one, The Bloody Chamber and other Stories. The work of a fearless feminist, brilliant stylist, edgy dreamer and a humourist, too. She understood that fairy tales are dangerous things, not really for children.
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials Trilogy
1995-2000
Parallel worlds to ours are realised in marvellous detail and conveyed in compelling narratives.
Sarah Hall - Madame Zero
2017
All her work to date, but to single out one, Madame Zero. A collection of darkly erotic stories, written in exquisite, glittering prose.
Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
2020
A lonely creature lives in a huge house full of statues and secrets, that is subject to tidal flooding and may, or may not, have somebody else living there, as well. There is no limit to this writer’s imagination.