“Seek out gaps, as these offer opportunities for creativity”, said Hilary Mantel in her BBC Reith Lecture. I recognise this as the element which drew me towards my first biographical fiction novel. I hope botanists don’t rattle their vasculums, nor prospectors clatter their pans, in protest at my own version of history when they get their hands on GREEN GOLD.Continue Reading

Listen to the story of Evelyn’s Sylva and The New Sylva on the BBC’s Farming Today programme (11th April 2014): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zr1zd Piece runs between approx 3:50 and 7:10 mins.Continue Reading

Today is April Fool’s Day. Perhaps the most famous April Fool’s Day hoax of all time involved trees.  Viewers of a BBC Panorama programme in 1957 were told that due to a combination of favourable growing conditions and a fall in the population of the spaghetti weevil, there was aContinue Reading