Who are you?

If I could work that out, I wouldn’t write at all. I’m a hybrid in that I’ve lived for years in several different countries, including five years in Spain and more than eight years in Argentina. In a few days I return to a London winter. I’m Scottish, and was brought up in a small village in the Scottish Highlands. When I visited London for the first time, I found it intoxicating yet alien. I am a sociable man and dread the periods I have to shut myself away in order to write-during these bouts, it’s goodbye to camaraderie. My athletic life is also important to me. What else? I recently launched “The International Literary
Quarterly“. Regarding writing, I think this relates to seismic events I have been through and my attempts to synthesize these. My early years were privileged as my father was a successful businessman but my parents never married and when he left, we were plunged into real poverty. That stays with you.

What do you write?

I’ve just made my first foray into fiction-a short story called “Trip to Hell” which came out the other day in “Boston Literary Magazine”. The story is based on a relationship I had in Norway before I went up to Cambridge. Given that I had to write to a 1,000 word limit, it’s over-compressed, but I hope it nonetheless conveys the atmosphere of my year in that country. In fact, the town called “Hell” does exist. For a long time I have wanted to write fiction-prior to this I wrote critical articles, literary translations from Spanish and French and interviews. In addition to embarking on a number of journalistic assignments (I recently became a member of the NUJ) I’ll continue to write in all of these media and soon will write about the criminal personality-this subject enthralls me. Also, a radio play, with an interesting take on an aspect of William Gladstone, is in the offing.

Why do you write what you write?

As I said, I’ll continue writing in all of media but fiction will be my priority from now on. My next story will deal with paranoia. I am very interested in states of mind that border on madness or begin to be madness itself. The great love of my life-to date-went completely mad, an acute attack that proved to be total and, indeed, fatal. Anyway, my next story, and subsequent ones, will grapple with border-line states of mind.

Why should we read what you write?

I hope I will prove to be a strong narrator. In the end, this is the all-important thing. If the story line is not compelling, what’s the point of writing it at all? In general one can tell from the outset if the author has this button-holing quality-the first few lines say it all. Anyway, the writer is lucky to be read at all. There is so much literary competition out there and, apart from that, people have such busy lives, many things to juggle, so I certainly don’t take it for granted that people should read anything I write.

Is the world a better place because of what you write?

Not at all. I certainly don’t expect it to be. I am not a perfectibilian and I suppose we have to accept humanity with all its flaws. There is a murky quality to life which is chiaroscuro, with both light and shade. I have no literary agenda or axe to grind, and I fight shy of all literary “schools”. I do believe that the best writers are “amoral” in the sense that they can see a particular condition from different, and often variant, points of view. I tend to think that those who are dogmatic would be better– with their one-dimensional judgements– to give creative writing a wide berth. I would go along with Keats who gave primacy to “the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination.” In the end, what else matters?