A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.

A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.

cause when there's life there's still hope

Often it's the latest novel that I've written that is my favourite. I'd been dreaming it for so long, living and breathing its story so that when it finally arrives as a newly published book, smelling wonderful and fresh out of the box, there is nothing like it.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.