A Writer's Life

 Who on earth wants to know about your life? Unless you’re a celebrity, or you’ve done something weird or ground-breaking. Maybe I’m just an attention-seeking, narcissistic idiot! I’ve had to think a lot about the ‘why’ – and it has a lot to do with my much-loved younger brother, Jon.  He died as a homeless alcoholic before he reached old age. He lay in hospital suffering from organ failure for almost two weeks before he died, alone, and his family weren’t told that he was there. It’s a wound that keeps on being re-opened.   Sitting in Birmingham railway station, on my way to the Historical Novel conference in Dartington, I was approached by a homeless man, aged about 50, very polite and non-threatening, who asked for money for a coffee. I asked him about himself and he told me that he was a drug addict on a programme, living in a homeless hostel and struggling to stay clean. He’d once had a good job, a wife, a house with a mortgage, until drugs had got hold of him. He was a lovely man