China, Art & History

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-48476879/tiananmen-s-tank-man-the-image-that-china-forgot In China it is dangerous to mourn the students who died in the Tiananmen Square 30 years ago today. Even more citizens of Beijing died trying to stop the tanks reaching the square. My novel ‘Brushstrokes in Time’ could

Memories.. a video Part 1 by the Meridian Society. Meeting Qu Leilei https://www.facebook.com/TheMeridianSociety/videos/1141067562675489/ Parts 2 and 3 https://www.facebook.com/TheMeridianSociety/videos/1141567299292182/ https://www.facebook.com/TheMeridianSociety/videos/1147685558680356/

This is one of my favourite reviews of Brushstrokes in Time. I am fortunate that whoever reads my novel(including those named above)are impressed by its authenticity.They say they feel transported to the time and place when the courageous Stars artists

I couldn’t have written Brushstrokes in Time without the background detail of the years 1965-1980 provided by the artist Qu Leilei. The artist's father, Qu Bo, was the most famous novelist of his time. Tracks in the Snowy Forest was

During the 15 years I reviewed exhibitions for The Oxford Times – when I was proud to write for it - the show that moved me the most was Qu Leilei's ‘Everyone’s Life is an Epic.’ Meeting him and hearing

Do you know how it feels to read thoughts that echo your own? I’ve just read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Lies that Bind. My second novel Sculpting the Elephant explores identity and crossing cultures. In Oxford we have the world’s

There is a chapter in Brushstrokes in Time set in 1990 in a so called ’Re-Education Centre’. My novel was published in 2016 so, in fairness, I added an authorial note I titled ‘The Changing Face of China.’ I wrote

The historian Margaret MacMillan in her thought provoking BBC Reith Lectures ‘The Mark of Cane’ tackles the subject of war in a manner that includes multiple different narratives. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csxgs0 In her fourth lecture ‘Managing the Unmanageable’ in which she talks

Brushstrokes in Time has been translated into German and Drackenhaus Verlag will publish it in 2019. Claret Press will publish my second novel Sculpting the Elephant next March.  If only I wrote crime fiction I could make money but I am a sad old