Honourable Mention from Mail on Sunday Columnist Peter Hitchens
Januaray 2017
I was beyond thrilled to be featured on Mail on Sunday Columnist Peter Hitchens’ blog. Here’s the full text.
“I am sent a lot of books. I feel bad about this because the authors reasonably hope that I may mention them, and I have many time seen in the same position, hoping that other writers will mention my books. Usually they don’t (though when they do I am very pleased) And I understand why not. Generally, there isn’t really time to read them. We all have our own interests to pursue.
But today I’m going to make a slight exception. A few months ago I was sent a novel by someone called K.A. Hitchins with the rather haunting title of ‘The Key of all Unknown’ (this turns out to be a hymn, but not one I’ve ever sung or heard).
This obviously caught my eye. As far as I know, we’re not related. But it did make it harder to leave it to one side. My family name has nothing to with the rather plain Hertfordshire town of Hitchin, in which I once got rather surprisingly lost on a bicycle, but is in fact Cornish (how often I’ve wished it was one of those rugged, jaunty Cornish names like Trevithick or Trelawney or Penhaligon), a local diminutive of ‘Richard’s son’, much like ‘Dickens’, but less euphonious. And it can be spelled with an ‘ens’ or an ‘ins’. And probably with an ‘ings’ as well, depending on where it was first written down in a Parish register. I can’t trace my lot any further west than Avebury, In Wiltshire, where they were making their troublesome path ( as stroppy Nonconformists, I suspect, judging by my grandfather) eastwards towards Portsmouth, escaping the hungry land for the rough and crude life of Pompey’s teeming, cruel back streets in the mid-19th century.
But I gave it (perhaps) a bit more of a chance than if it had been written by someone with another name.
And it turns out to be rather clever. In fact, there were times when, while reading it, I forgot the outside world, which seems to me to be the best test of fiction. Two things struck me especially. It was not instinctively scornful of religious belief; and its central character was trapped inside herself on a hospital bed, the victim of, well, read it and see, conscious of all around her but unable to communicate the many things she knows, but which those around her do not.
I thought this was a clever and timely plot device, and it is well-used. To say more would be to spoil it. But I promised the author I would mention it here, and so I have.”
THANK YOU!
Januaray 2017
I was beyond thrilled to be featured on Mail on Sunday Columnist Peter Hitchens’ blog. Here’s the full text.
“I am sent a lot of books. I feel bad about this because the authors reasonably hope that I may mention them, and I have many time seen in the same position, hoping that other writers will mention my books. Usually they don’t (though when they do I am very pleased) And I understand why not. Generally, there isn’t really time to read them. We all have our own interests to pursue.
But today I’m going to make a slight exception. A few months ago I was sent a novel by someone called K.A. Hitchins with the rather haunting title of ‘The Key of all Unknown’ (this turns out to be a hymn, but not one I’ve ever sung or heard).
This obviously caught my eye. As far as I know, we’re not related. But it did make it harder to leave it to one side. My family name has nothing to with the rather plain Hertfordshire town of Hitchin, in which I once got rather surprisingly lost on a bicycle, but is in fact Cornish (how often I’ve wished it was one of those rugged, jaunty Cornish names like Trevithick or Trelawney or Penhaligon), a local diminutive of ‘Richard’s son’, much like ‘Dickens’, but less euphonious. And it can be spelled with an ‘ens’ or an ‘ins’. And probably with an ‘ings’ as well, depending on where it was first written down in a Parish register. I can’t trace my lot any further west than Avebury, In Wiltshire, where they were making their troublesome path ( as stroppy Nonconformists, I suspect, judging by my grandfather) eastwards towards Portsmouth, escaping the hungry land for the rough and crude life of Pompey’s teeming, cruel back streets in the mid-19th century.
But I gave it (perhaps) a bit more of a chance than if it had been written by someone with another name.
And it turns out to be rather clever. In fact, there were times when, while reading it, I forgot the outside world, which seems to me to be the best test of fiction. Two things struck me especially. It was not instinctively scornful of religious belief; and its central character was trapped inside herself on a hospital bed, the victim of, well, read it and see, conscious of all around her but unable to communicate the many things she knows, but which those around her do not.
I thought this was a clever and timely plot device, and it is well-used. To say more would be to spoil it. But I promised the author I would mention it here, and so I have.”
THANK YOU!