‘The Midnight Man’ is published and out in the wild. I’ve had an amazing week following its publication, with some tremendous reviews. My interview with Crime Time presenter Paul Burke was great fun, although recorded earlier (you can listen to it on the link below) and I’m doing more, with UK Crime Book Club on the 17th and Riverside Radio Arts on 24th May. In between there are book 
clubs and libraries to visit where I’ll be talking about ‘The Midnight Man’ and the South London Hospital for Women and Children. Tomorrow I’m off to the Royal College of Nursing for the launch of their Summer exhibition and programme of events ‘Shining a Light’.
The RCN isn’t the only medical institution to be interested, the UK Association for the History of Nursing has asked for a copy and ‘The Midnight Man’ will feature in their journal and possibly on their website. The Fawcett Society has shown an interest and the Historic Novel Society is carrying a review. So lots of interest.
In the meanwhile I’ve been to see ‘Nye’ the new play by Tim Price, based on the life of Aneurin Bevan,
‘founder’ of the National Health Service. Bevan, played by Michael Sheen, was Minister for Health in the Attlee government and the driving force behind the creation of the NHS, although he had to make compromises to force it through. I was pleased to see that the play represented the opposition of the some of the medical unions, something which is also referred to in ‘The Midnight Man’. We treasure the NHS now ( or should do, though I appreciate that many years of underfunding and ‘reorganisations’ has meant long delays and some deficiencies ) but, at the time it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that it would be set up, let alone survive. Yet, as the post curtain call stats shone on to the back of the stage show, it has saved many lives and alleviated much suffering, which 
would not have been the case had it not existed.
The play also seeks to show the pain, anguish and anger caused when medicine is not available, because of the inability to pay for care, something I tried to do in ‘Midnight Man’ through the character of Phoebe. Tuberculosis was a killer disease, for which there was no cure, and which reached pandemic proportions at different times in its history. It was also highly contagious and sufferers were isolated, with their loved ones made to keep a distance from them (not unlike COVID).
I can certainly recommend the play and it is a remarkable performance by Sheen, with Sharon Small as Jennie Lee. It’s not the only recent West End play which features the period immediately post-war. Lucy Kirkwood’s ‘The Human Body’ starring Keeley Hawes and Jack Whitehall was at the Donmar until the end of last month, about post-war female emancipation and the NHS. Must be something in the zeitgeist.
I speak about some of this in the interview with Paul. If you’re interested you can hear that here.
Only three weeks to go before my next book is published (by Hobeck Books) and I’ve received some very complimentary comments from fellow authors who have read proofs, like Vaseem Khan (award-winning author of the Malabar House series, set in 1950s India), Victoria Dowd (award-winning author of the Smart Woman series) and Elizabeth Buchan (multi-award winner and fellow south Londoner ). This is the enjoyable time, the pleasant anticipation, the dream of a best-seller, unsullied by one star reviews or poor sales numbers.
so I’ll be speaking at the Clapham Society and local libraries and book clubs. Some are London wide – the London Transport Museum is carrying the book in its shop and I’ll be working with them to be part of their events calendar. Some are national – so I’ll be part of the Royal College of Nursing’s Summer exhibition and events programme, which is taking place across the country. I’m looking forward to attending its launch on 10th May (see above).
not a medic, though she worked for the RCN; a third generation involvement with nursing and medicine, albeit in a different capacity to her surgeon great grandmother. She told me lots of stories about Maud, known by the family as ‘Aunt Mary’ and sent me a photograph of her portrait, which currently hangs in Antonia’s mother’s house in London.
I don’t know the answer to that and neither did Antonia. I hope to be able to speak with her father, who has a fund of stories about ‘Aunt Mary’ which might be enlightening. Nonetheless, I like to think that Maud, who had probably developed something of a thick skin by this time – she was denounced from the pulpit by her minister father (he said he would rather she died than became a doctor) when she was younger and had to blaze trails in other ways, decided, rather like Groucho Marx, not to join any club which would have her as a member, especially one which, in years previously, would not admit her.
This is not the only remarkable coincidence attaching to this book. Early in the writing process, at first draft stage, I received an unanticipated invitation to a birthday celebration for a friend and couldn’t (for reasons too tedious to go into here) buy a birthday gift in time. So my gift was to name a character after my friend in the new book. I duly did so and, just prior to final editing, I sent her a copy of the manuscript. If she hadn’t liked ‘her’ character, or had had second thoughts about my using her name, she could withdraw and I would change the name. She and her partner, who also had a named character, were very happy, though she responded by sending me a copy of the birth certificate of her first born son. He was born at the South London Hospital in the 1970s! She had never mentioned where he was born (he now lives in Canada) so I had no idea. Thus, I found, my friend was a real patient at the real hospital as well as being a ‘character’ in the fictional version. What are the chances of that?
Two happy accidents; I hope they bode well for the book. ‘The Midnight Man’ is published by Hobeck Books on 30th April. I will be posting further pieces about it as the date approaches. Available for pre-order from Mr Besos’ 
I am very pleased with the cover of my next novel, The Midnight Man. Created by graphic designer, 
hereby hangs another tale, which I will doubtless return to.
Clapham Common, clustered around Clapham South Underground station. Some of these places are highly unusual, some still exist (although they have been repurposed) and others can be visited today.
large donation which, some speculated, came from a female member of the royal family, they collected enough to found the South London Hospital for Women and Children. At first the hospital operated in two large houses near Clapham South tube station, but, in 1916, Queen Mary opened a purpose-built eighty bed hospital, the largest women’s general hospital in the UK.
fondly remembered the ‘South London’ or ‘SLH’. There is even a Facebook group, to which I now belong, entitled South London Women’s Hospital occupation 1984─85 where those who protested at the time, many of them staff and patients, reminisce and organize the occasional get together. So, there was a certain amount of pressure to get it right.
good location for my book, enabling me to show changes taking place. Then I found out about the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Clapham has been my home for over thirty years and I used to walk past the empty hospital buildings on my way to and from the tube every day, but I knew little about it. When I began researching, I discovered that it was the largest woman-only hospital in the UK, run exclusively by and for women. This made it both unusual and very apposite for my book.
the early hospital. I also spoke with a former midwife and former nurses, all of whom fondly remembered the hospital. There is a Facebook group, to which I now belong, called South London Women’s Hospital occupation 1984─85 where those who protested at the hospital’s closure, many of them staff and patients, reminisce and organize the occasional get together.
architect’s plans. I also read minutes of meetings of the South London’s management board and similar minutes belonging to other hospitals of the time and this helped to give me an understanding of the context. It is instructive that, despite there being an acute shortage of nurses after the war, the SLH never had a problem attracting nurses; it was a place where women wanted to work.
Clapham South underground station onto Clapham Common Southside, about a hundred yards away you’ll see a concrete pillbox of a building, on the common very close to the busy road. Currently graffiti covered, this unlovely and unloved building is the entrance to a fascinating world beneath the ground.
rockets bombarded London. South Londoners descended, nightly, in the lifts, to their bunk space in the shelter, which held canteens, lavatories, washrooms and a medical centre. Apparently, it was quite sociable, people played music, sang songs and played cards and other games as the rockets fell overhead. All this while the underground trains rumbled above them, the shelters being deeper even than the underground lines.
my characters go to watch the latest films, exist but have been repurposed. The cinema is now a wine warehouse. The hospital buildings are a supermarket and apartments. The common is, of course, still there as is Sugden Road, where one of my main characters lives in a rented Victorian terraced house. Her working-class family wouldn’t be able to afford that now.
It’s always exciting when a book finally hits the bookshelves on publication and especially so with the first in a new series. The Midnight Man is published on 30th April 2024 by 
unusual one ( I’ll be blogging about it as publication day approaches ). Some of its buildings still stand, near Clapham South Underground station as the photograph (right) shows. This was the ‘New Wing’ erected in the 1930s. It is now an apartment building, above a supermarket ( the entrance to which can just be seen on the far left).
Underground station and station parade, which is still there; the Odeon cinema, now a wine warehouse on Balham Hill and the deep shelters on Clapham Common. The Common itself features quite heavily too.
I have just returned to a cold and sleety Clapham after the sunnier skies of southern Spain, where the scent of orange blossom was already in the air and the 27th edition of the 
castanets dancing to black clad male guitarists, although you could see that if that was what you wanted. No, something fascinating has been happening for a number of years at this festival and this edition was no exception. Younger practitioners are examining the boundaries of what flamenco means, exploring and expanding their art.
We did see an amazing reflection on life and death in Finitud, the aforementioned Calero Caballero collaboration. We saw the pair ten years ago when their skill and artistry was expressed beautifully through the traditional forms and we’ve looked out for them ever since. Boy, have they developed. The show included an electric base guitar as well as flamenco guitar and, astonishingly, Mozart’s Requiem. A singer, a dancer and two musicians conjured up the vibrancy of the south American Day of the Dead, the solitude of graveyard contemplation and a lot in between. We had a fun 1930s cartoon of skeletons dancing to make us laugh and ended with an auto de fe. Stunning! This show was hugely emotionally engaging and created some stupendous images which will fill my mind for quite some time. It encapsulates what a new generation of flamenco artists are doing, developing themselves and their art.
in art or, as a writer, on the page? What is creativity? I, for one, will be reflecting on this, with friend and fellow writer, Sunday Times best-selling novelist, 
Deep inside the Blavatnik Building, itself recently the subject of a Supreme Court ruling, sit two small ‘rooms’ white painted ‘blocks’ from outside, but full of light, water and reflection within. These are Yayoi’s Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, global phenomena. Tickets are limited and even when you have them you will queue to enter each room. At four fifteen on a Friday those queues were each about ten minutes in length, but getting longer as time went on. When you get to the doors you are allowed inside in groups of six people only and, when you’re inside, it’s easy to see why numbers are restricted. 
). It is disorientating; difficult to tell who is real and who is reflection – and it wasn’t any easier looking at the photos afterwards. The chandelier repeats into an apparently vast chasm in the floor as well as along corridors into space. There are reflections of reflections, not all in the manner you imagine either, but when, say, a pair of bodyless photographing hands gets caught in the regressions.
A myriad of lights are hung from the ceiling ( at least that’s how I reasoned it must work, I don’t actually know if that’s correct ) reflecting in multiple mirrors again, but also in the water on the floor. The visitor walks along a three foot wide pathway between the lights from one side of the ‘room’ to the other, something which takes but two or three minutes, if one was walking at normal pace. In fact one walks then stands, marvelling at the reflections and the lights, before starting out again. What the photographs in this piece don’t show is the variation in the colours of these lights as they slowly change from colour scheme to colour scheme. That is best shown when you look into the water (see below for a slightly better representation).
biographical details which place the rooms into context of Yayoi Kushama’s life and work, plus the wonderful mirror box which in featured in an earlier piece I wrote when the Tate extension first opened. That too is worth seeing and playing with. Booking is currently until April though the exhibition is closed for maintenance in March. At a tenner it’s worth visiting (and you can catch the wonderful standing collection and some superb, free exhibitions, like A Year in Art; Australia 1992, which I’ve also written about elsewhere ). Highly recommended.
The 2022 Clapham Book Festival is all but over. It began on a gloriously sunny autumn day on 9th October, walking around the Common on the Literary Trail, something which was repeated this Saturday last. It was a lovely day again, but, as the walk neared its end, the sky grew black. People dispersed and I headed for home to change for my afternoon session when the heavens opened. I got soaked through.
tremendous, a joy to interview, in that he has a huge fund of anecdotes and amusing tales which makes life very easy for the interviewer. He grew up in Hamilton, just outside Glasgow to Bengali parents and talked about schooldays tribalism – ‘Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?’ ‘I’m a Hindu.’ Silence, followed by, ‘Yes, but are you a Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu?’. The hour flew by and there was little time for questions, but everyone was entertained and impressed. The books practically flew off the counter, all signed by Abir.
The cafe/bar at Omnibus had been packed all afternoon, not just with Festival goers, but also a ‘New Mums n’ Dads’ club meeting, but this ended by about five thirty, which was a relief, as we knew we had a completely full house that evening for Sir Antony Beevor and Dr Piers Brendon. The Cafe/bar is a super space, but it would be creaking at the seams with eighty Festival folk, let alone the new parents. We need not have worried. Although crowded, this leant the whole evening an excited buzz.
win the Russian Civil War? What did he think would happen in Ukraine? Why was the Russian Civil War so full of atrocities and were we seeing a repetition in Ukraine? The hour, as with Abir Mukherjee, flew past, though for different reasons, this was intellectual engagement of a high order. Afterwards the queue for both presenters was long, with people anxious to get their books signed before the evening closed.
Hosted by Lucy Kane from media partners 
Julie Anderson 