For me, as for many people, it’s been a summer of reading. I’ve not had the brain space or inclination for creative writing and preparations for next term’s online teaching have taken a toll. For the last eleven days, Sue and I were meant to be travelling around Norway by train. Instead, we’ve visited my dad in Colne, shortly before Pendle was locked down again and made a fleeting visit to Sue’s family in Stevenage. The only thing our holiday has had in common with the one we should have had is that a lot of reading has been done. Since my lockdown blog, I have finished Hilary Mantel’s Booker winning (spoiler alert) The Mirror and the Light, which is decidedly longer than its two…

For the last three days, I’ve immersed myself in Graeme Thomson’s excellent new biography Small Hours: the long night of John Martyn, and Martyn’s music, which I’ve been listening to for 46 years. If you don’t know John’s work (though why else would you reading this?) here’s a playlist I made shortly after he died, aged sixty, in 2009. I discovered John Martyn in the mid-70s, when I was sixteen, and met him when I was 18, at a benefit gig for Liquorice. Writing for this fanzine had led to my studying in Nottingham, where I was in my first term at uni. I was on general hosting and recording duties. Martyn sound checked with a solid electric guitar, which he’d never used on stage…

Normally at this time of year, I write about my holiday reading on my blog. This year, while I haven’t had a holiday, I’ve done loads of reading, if not in quite the same way. So here’s this Easter’s reading, which I’m also sharing on the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature website. Nearly everyone I know is having trouble concentrating for long periods. A case in point. I have a long standing reading rule which is: when I’m not enjoying a book after fifty pages, I give up on it, if I haven’t already, but if I get past the fiftieth page, I always finish it. The first week of lockdown, I broke this rule, pausing my reading of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the…

The Coronavirus crisis poses existential questions for The Arts as for so much of society. Everyone at NUCoL is doing what we can to adapt to the new situation. Our mission remains the same, building a better world with words, chiefly by fostering literacy and well-being through creative writing. In particular, we’re supporting our young people and our city’s writers, whose work was recognised by Nottingham’s UNESCO status. Reading and writing are crucial tools to help us through these times. I have three books on the go, a challenging novel, a huge, fact-filled biography and, my bedtime comfort read, an omnibus of 60s novels by the great US crime writer, Ross MacDonald. Most of the creative writers I know are, like me, not finding it…

Getting used to the new normal is going to be testing. It’s hard to concentrate on writing at the moment but moving what can be moved online is keeping me busy. Meanwhile NUCoL is gearing up to meet this challenge and work out how best we can continue our mission of building a better world with words. Tomorrow’s launch of the MyVoice book at the Council House has had to be postponed, which is very sad for the students involved and our staff who have spent so much time working on it. But the book will be available soon and we’re making new plans. Talking of which… Next week I was due to meet one of my favourite novelists, Geoff Nicholson, a Sheffield born author…