The books I've selected this month are The Writer's Tale , a "tell-all" discussion of Russell T Davies's creative life, with lots of fascinating insights into how Dr Who is made. Of the fiction I read, the highlight was Lisa See's wonderful story of two women in nineteenth-century China, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan . The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter , Russell T Davies with Benjamin Cook (BBC Books, 2010) I read a lot of books about writing and creativity. I think, though, they are two different things. Books about writing are about the nuts and bolts – how tos and guides. Books about creativity are explorations of what creativity is, how and why we create books or art or whatever we create, how creativity happens or how we make it happen, what it means, what it does. I love all the different approaches there are to creativity, the variety of experience, reading a book and thinking “yes it’s like that for me” or “no it isn’t like that”, and knowing th...

Santa’s been and gone and I hope he has left everyone something they wanted, particularly in books. As usual, the old fellow has come up with the literary goods for me, as well as delivering some surprises. Biggest surprise of all has been a signed copy of Michael Moorcock’s Doctor Who novel The Coming of the Terraphiles . I never saw this one coming! The only TV spin off novels I’ve ever read were about Stingray when I was a child; it’s not a genre I’ve ever explored as an adult. The rather ugly name for books based on stories that first appear in film or TV form is “novelisation”. According to the BBC’s h2g2 site, Doctor Who is the most novelised programme in history, with only five episodes not transformed to book form. Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks alone wrote over 60 of them. Other famous novelisations are Star Trek , Blake’s 7 and the original Battlestar Galactica (I am currently rewatching the superb remake with Edward James Olmos). Comments the author of the h2g2...

The last half of March was an anxious time. He was due to arrive on Saturday 3 April, but I was going to be in Italy and I’d miss him. We had a wonderful time visiting the Colosseum, the Forum and Castel Sant Angelo. A morning in Ostia was lovely. We went early, before the crowds, and found ourselves sharing the ruins with birds and lizards. Then on to Sorrento by way of Monte Cassino, where we visited the Polish Cemetery. I happened to be reading Richard Holmes on Wellington during the journey. The visit and the book brought back all my loathing of war, of the pomp and ceremony and cool language behind which this most dreadful of human failings is cloaked. From these saddening thoughts on to Sorrento where as we sat carelessly eating and drinking a procession of cloaked and hooded penitents passed by. To terrible Vesuvius next and a hot walk to the top of the crater, climbing up from the ordure that infests the area around the ticket office: the dog shit and litter, dust and fume-belc...