I am the Queen of the Killer Eels! In conversation with Rachel Bennett


Rachel Bennett is a Manx writer of Crime and Thrillers whose debut novel The Flood came out in September with Avon Books. The novel takes places in a flooded town where a death in the family unspools into a dark tale of past and present mysteries. 

Here she talks to us about her career in the Isle of Man's criminal courts and pathology department, her work with the Manx Lit Fest, and her love of classic horror.

Rachel, you’ve had some interesting jobs, tell us a bit about them.

For ten years I was working in the criminal justice system; my posh job title was Clerk to the Deputy High Bailiff; she was the first female member of a Manx judiciary so that was pretty exciting, on the same level as a magistrate. I was working in the criminal courts and in the lower criminal courts.

And what did you do there?

You know in movies when you see a stenographer in the court typing away? They do a recording now; it was my job to press ‘record’. And it was all the paperwork that goes along with that. I never personally sent anyone to jail, but I had to complete the paperwork to send people to jail!

So witnessing the daily comings and goings of petty crime?

Yes exactly, we’re such a small jurisdiction you see the same folks coming in all the time and you get to know faces and names and we also worked quite closely with the prison and probation service and everything so I got to know a little bit about the rehabilitation of criminals side of things; I wanted to pull some of that into a book if I could.

So you heard about some interesting criminal stories I imagine?

Certainly, one particularly memorable one was when a farm accidentally released a load of slurry into a river, killing 28 fish and one eel – but the advocate representing the farm insisted that although 28 fish had indeed died, the eel later recovered. This was despite us being shown a photo of the (definitely dead) eel pinned to a board! The eel became known as Lazarus and was forevermore a long-running joke in the office.

Oh right, some pretty off the wall stuff then…

Yeah just have a google of Manx news. I’m not sure if it’s just being on an island that we’re particularly susceptible. And we have our own laws and our own government and everything…

That throws up quite a few interesting linguistic quirks doesn’t it? Isn’t there a law for ‘Furious Driving’?

Yeah there is a charge of ‘Furious Driving’. We’ve got one called ‘Provoking Behaviour’ too, anything that would provoke a reaction you can charge it under ‘Provoking Behaviour’ and get done for it.

Sounds like the kind of open-ended law an authoritarian dictatorship would love(!)

Yeah it’s not an offence you can go to prison for but if someone’s being a bit drunk and shouty, or having an argument with the neighbours, or doing something else weird…

…I’m being provoked!

You are doing an action that would provoke a reaction from me therefore…

Any other funny words or phrases that come to mind?

Yes, we’ve got Deemsters instead of Judges. When they swear them into office they have to take an oath that they will take the law as straight and impartial ‘as the backbone lies within the herring.’

That’s fantastic!

Yeah in the court building there’s a big metal statue of a herring and you can see its backbone down the middle, isn’t that neat?

And along with courts, you’ve worked in Pathology too, is that right?

Yes, before I started in courts I was in the Department of Pathology for about ten years. I was in the office and I typed up post-mortems and stuff.

Yet another great job for someone who wants to write crime books…

The main thing it taught me is that pathologists will not leave their office for anything. When you read a crime book and it’s like ‘the pathologist went to the crime scene’, oh no he didn’t!

So not just an insight into pathology but pathologists too.

It gives you a real insight into the many terrible things that can happen to a human body and how they can fail, stop working, come apart and all that sort of thing – but you do become a bit blase about it.

You have to develop a detachment I suppose?

Yeah I’m not sure how healthy it was, everyone there was quite mad in their own personal ways. But it was very interesting and it definitely got me writing about that sort of thing and the forensic side.

Working as a fly on the wall in pathology and criminal courts, you couldn’t be better placed to write a crime novel!

It’s meant that I’ve had access to people. The number of times I said to someone ‘can I ask you a million questions about your job?’. There are some very nice people on the Isle of Man Constabulary Force who I owe a lot of beer to for some very random questions(!)

Let’s talk about your latest book The Flood. Where did you get the idea to set a novel in a flooded town?

Just from watching it on the news. I’ve fortunately never been in that situation but I’ve always really liked the idea of a locked, enclosed location like an isolated place, and watching the news and seeing towns that are properly cut off; it’s a setting I’ve always wanted to use. I had tried to use it a few times and it didn’t take off… this book came very close to having killer eels in it.
Same setting, some of the same characters, killer eels.

No way! What happened to them? Don’t tell me Leslie made you cut the killer eels?!

No, no, I grew up reading pulp horror like Guy N Smith. My first big love is always going to be monsters and ridiculous scary stuff. It was honestly a real departure to try and write about the real world. It’s relatively easy when there’s zombies or killer eels because if you get stuck you can make a monster appear and they do the hard work for you.

Right! You get to play by your own rules. The reader reads it on your terms. Who are they to say what your killer eels should be doing? You made them!

Exactly: they’re mine! They do what I tell them! I am the Queen of the Killer Eels!

So it sounds like a lot of the details came from different imaginative processes and ideas you had.

Yeah and stealing bits from everywhere to be honest, I’m a terrible pick pocket when it comes to ideas, and things that I’ve seen in various places. I try and write down everything because my memory is terrible. I put everything into my notebook and then I’ll steal bits like a magpie, and try and smoosh them all together into a cohesive story. And sometimes it works and sometimes it really doesn’t. Fingers crossed it seems to have worked ok so far.

Well it has certainly worked for The Flood! Have you enjoyed having the book out?

It’s been great! Everyone’s been so nice about it. People keep talking to me about it and it’s so weird to have something that’s been inside my own head for years, and now suddenly people are talking about it *like it’s a real book*; where they’re up to, which bit they’re reading now, what they think is going to happen. It’s a bit of a surreal experience. I’m very much enjoying it though!

In September you were a part of the Manx Lit Fest, is that right?

Yes, the Manx Literary Festival is our local lit fest and I squirmed my way onto the committee a few years ago. I coordinate their Writers’ Day which is aimed at aspiring authors. It’s been very successful – we’ve just had our eighth year. It’s lead to quite a few success stories from our local authors. Elizabeth Brooks had a book out last year called ‘Call Of The Curlew’, Rona Halsall has just had her fourth book out on Bookoutre, and they all found literary agents through coming to our events!

That’s great to be cultivating local talent.

Yeah we’re so proud of our local authors, there’s a shocking amount of home grown talent over here.

So what’s next for Rachel Bennett? How’s the future looking?

Looking rosy! Book two is with the copy-editor at the moment. Actually it’s just come back from the copy editor, I’m supposed to be doing edits right now, but I’m putting up Christmas decorations and things, I’ll get around to it very soon! They’ve sent me the cover it looks fantastic. Due for release end of May next year, so that’s very exciting. I’m trying to get ahead with book three as well.

Any monsters on the horizon?

Not quite… I’m trying to stay in my lane with this for a moment, I’m trying to stick to the crime and thriller thing, that seems to be what people would like at present.

We’ll see how book two does, and maybe if the publishers get desperate we can pull out the fantastical monsters.

Well, if you need a back catalogue of ridiculous monsters attacking Birmingham I’ve got us covered!

And organising the Manx Lit Fest for next year?

Yes, we’re in the throes of planning it at the moment. We haven’t announced who we’ve got next year but between you and me, [REDACTED]’s coming over next September.

Woah my gosh that’s incredible!

We do quite well to be honest; for such a small festival we’ve had some pretty good names – we got Martina Cole last year. She made everyone come back to the hotel and sit in the bar getting drunk until two in the morning! She kept buying everyone drinks and wouldn’t let them leave, she was an absolute star.

What a legend! Anything else on the horizon?

I’m in a new job now, I’m now a librarian which is amazing and I’m working in the mobile library side of it as well, which means I get to go out in a bus full of books, drive around, it’s like Postman Pat you just go around and distribute books to people.

What a great CV you’ve got, you must never be short of anecdotes!

Yeah I’ve got a lot of stories, I’ve just given you a sample, but I have a lot more. If we ever end up in the pub I’ll tell you some of the others.

Save it for the lit fest after-party!

Definitely. We’ll see if we can get someone like Martina Cole to buy our drinks⬛️

Thanks very much to Rachel for chatting to us, and the pleasure of being her literary agents. Interview edited for clarity.

Singapore Writers Festival

Inaugurated in 1986, the Singapore Writers Festival celebrates South East Asian literary talent as well as bringing together writers, speakers, and delegates from all over the world.  

Artellus director Leslie Gardner made the trip across the globe to attend workshops on Science Fiction, hear talks by Roxane Gay and Marlon James, and buy more books than she should have...

The week-long writers festival was packed with great talks and vividly attentive participants. All was spread out among three venues: The Arts House at the Old Parliament Building, the National Gallery of Singapore (a staggeringly innovative architectural gem), and the basement of the Asian Cultures Museum – across the bay from colonial reminders of earlier times, Raffles Hotel and the Fullerton Hotel – formerly Post Office for the nation. The festival could not have been placed in a better spot in this tropical city-state replete with food stalls and shopping malls.

Before the festival however, a quick visit to the big Japanese owned bookstore Kinokuniya in the Takoshima Mall on Orchard Road, where I picked up all the brochures required. It’s also a great spot to buy and browse for books in Asian languages and English – they pushed and supported the festival with great promotional skill, and had extensive information on the festival and Singapore’s local writers.

Onto the Festival proper… My interest in Science and Speculative Fiction was evidently shared. Impressive numbers attended talks on things such as ‘The Future of Science Fiction’, ‘Chatbox and fiction’, or ‘Invisible Cities, Memory and Fiction’. There were workshops with enthusiastic participants such as ‘Postcolonial Criticism and Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction’. The big questions were tackled with gusto: how the future would look, the impact of video games on plot and character, and what’s science and technology got to do with fiction? All in the presence of such writers as Boey MeiHan who writes Science Fiction in all-women and all-Asian universes, and the veteran writer, Pang Hee Juon.

The dilemmas all science/speculative fiction writers wrangle with were reworked, and refreshed at the same time. These workshops and talks about Science Fiction – and the carefully distinguished ‘Speculative’ fiction – dominated the schedule and were rightfully jam-packed. The excellent attendance did not preclude fun individual encounters, including one memorable talk in the corridor with Malaysian Science Fiction writer Ahmad Patria Abdullah about his rather more traditional view of Science Fiction. A genre that, in his view, should be founded not only in the time the novel is written but also bounded by technology of the time. In vain I advocated for Science Fiction having actually contributed ideas to real-life scientists! Technology and aliens are what we make of them…

Of course the crime novel is my other personal passion. I walked away with bags of crime books by local Singaporeans. One author, Nick Humphreys, was sitting at the table signing his books. I purchased Marina Bay Sins, the first in a dark satirical detective series set in his native Singapore and published by Marshall Cavendish. And then, well, I purchased Daren Goh’s ‘The HDB Murders’ (also set in Singapore) published by the local branch of publishing house Math Paper Press. These texts are a great way to get to know the seedy sides of the place, which Singaporeans are eager to disclaim(!) In conclusion: my bags were much heavier on the return to London.

Back in the festival ‘Bad feminist’ Roxane Gay brought much laughter in her session, and Marlon James spoke – his speculative works are all on sale along with his Man Booker-winning novel, ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’ – and essayist and travel writer Pico Iyer – both spoke to engaged audiences, admirers through and through.

As well as Singaporean branches of UK-based publishing, there are also those small local houses which for me are a great discovery. This is another indication of their seriousness in distributing into South-East Asia. There is a plethora of publishing houses in the city-state: Marshall Cavendish (SA branch), Penguin Random House (latest to the party in SA), and Math Paper Press, etc. There is still the ancient and noble tradition of publishing houses linking to bookstores, with the result of bookstores everywhere. Singapore dollars being reasonable value for my sterling-based budget, I bought a few more than planned (eek). The wonderful ‘Books Actually’ had a stand at the festival – we’d wandered its shelves already – and bought poetry published by their ‘ Math Paper Press’, which they run out of their backyard. The ‘Closetful of Books’ shop had a spread of local and international writers’ books that were irresistibly placed right at the entrance to the festival; Temptation was everywhere.

Organised and financed (alongside income from tickets) by the National Arts Council, the festival brings together multiple languages: English, Slinglish, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil among others. The mix of cultures is a core value in Singapore – and it is reflected in the literature. The festival was a celebration of global literary talent, billing the likes of home grown Singaporean writer and poet, Rex Shelley, (author of the classic The Shrimp People) alongside Canadian, Jamaican, British, and umpteen other nationality writers and speakers.

It was an atmospheric festival figuratively and literally: peppered with sporadic claps of thunder and lightning, the heavy tropical heat outside which meant hustling from one venue to another to be blissfully alleviated by air conditioning. I left with a head full of ideas, an armful of books and every intention of returning next year.

Power, Corruption & Lies: The World of Michael Gillard

Michael Gillard is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of experience uncovering corruption, organised crime, and illegal activity at the heart of London's establishment and beyond. 

His latest book LEGACY (Bloomsbury, 2019) traces the sinister underbelly of London's acclaimed 2012 Olympics, where organised crime and corruption were more involved than most people imagined.

Director of International Security Studies at RUSi and Artellus Associate Raffaello Pantucci spoke to Gillard about his work...

R: This is not your first book on organised crime and corruption in London, but tell us a bit about how this particular book came about?

M: It came about when I was in a pub, strangely, in 1999 and a load of detectives were there some of whom I was going to meet and amongst them there were two who looked particularly mournful and I asked one of them what was up and he explained to me that they had just come off this operation, this secret operation in East London targeting an organised crime figure called David Hunt who I had never heard of and that this character had walked away from the operation without any conviction. He had been held on remand in prison for slashing the throat of an associate which had happened at a car show room that the police were bugging, but for reasons that they weren’t aware of, they suspected corruption, he had got off because the witness had withdrawn his evidence. And then we got talking about the level of criminality that Mr Hunt was supposed to be involved and it just intrigued me enormously and from that point on I made it my business to find who he was and what he was about.

This is the first time David Hunt was one of the subjects of your books? Did he come up in earlier ones?

He was covered briefly in my first book Untouchables, which came out in 2004, but that was based on work about police corruption that I had started in 1999.

Were you worried writing about such dark and secretive topics as police and political corruption and organised criminals?

Not particularly, I am cautious. But if you look at the statistics British journalists by and large don’t face the types of threats that journalists in other countries, largely outside Europe, do face for reporting on this area. There have been two examples, interestingly enough in Northern Ireland and Ireland, of journalists being killed, not as a result of crossfire, but as a result of targeted assassination. One being Veronica Guerin in 1996 and the other being Martin O’Hagan in 2001. Veronica, who wrote about organised crime, and Marty, who wrote about the dirty war in Northern Ireland and the involvement of paramilitaries on either side in organised crime. But in general the idea of journalists being in danger for covering this area doesn’t really compute here, so there is not that kind of reason to be afraid. The bigger fear I feel about journalism in the UK is lawyers and the assault on freedom of expression through the rise of privacy law for the big rich, crooks and politicians.

So it was lawyers who scared you the most rather than any of the criminals or corrupt people you were looking at?

Gillard’s 2004 book The Untouchables (Bloomsbury) covered corruption in London’s Metropolitan Police

Rather than scare me, annoy me.

Could you tell us a bit more about Davey Hunt in particular?

David Hunt’s rise to the top of the gangster tree is typical of his generation – so he’s in his late fifties now – in terms of coming from a very hard, marginalised area in London, East London. And from a large family of brothers and sisters, I think he was the youngest who by the age of twenty-one had established himself as the top dog in his family which is no mean achievement.

I think there’s a misconception about gangster-ism in this country in particular. Very few gangsters are Robin Hood characters. Most of them are both moral conservatives and arch capitalists, and through heavy organised crime they want to legitimise themselves, and he was a classic example of that, and to do well for their family. And I think that at the time I started to look at him, he was on his way to becoming what they say in organised crime parlance, a legitimate businessman.

And he had done this through a number of means, through street cunning, a propensity for violence, psychological intimidation, and he is, you know, a street smart top gangster.

Some sociologists and writers try to look for environmental conditioning rather than the free will of some working class men to be career criminals. I think the very smart criminal Stephen Raymond said it best when he told me in an interview for Untouchables – “I’m a criminal by design not default.”

Raymond went on to tell me that he was “95% legitimate.” I asked about the other 5%, which he said he only did to piss off the police and show them how clever he was. Narcissism was his undoing and he eventually got a hefty sentence for a massive cocaine importation.

So by the time you were looking at Hunt he was a legit businessman rather than criminal anymore?

He was on his way to becoming a legitimate businessman. There had been quite incredible investments in a scrap metal yard on the Thames in Dagenham. He had bought himself a twenty-acre mansion in Essex. He had other business interests in entertainment – the infamous Epping Forest Country Club – and at the same time he was effectively a tax ghost. And when he did file any returns or make any mortgage applications, he lied about the size of his income; on paper he was a freelance scaffolder.

One of the fascinating things about reading the book is that you uncover all sorts of nefarious wrong doing and malfeasance, have you ever seen any prosecutions result from your work?

Unfortunately, I think I can say that I am a classic example of journalism having no effect whatsoever in terms of prosecutions. You can put it into the public domain, but at that point it’s down to the authorities. I think this country has a pretty poor record of prosecuting organised crime, its not because they don’t have the statutory tools, there are other problems with it. And also one of the things in this particular area is that after the events of 9/11 and the events in London of 7th of July, there was a wholesale disposition of policing away from organised crime work into counter-terrorism work. This combined with an anti-corruption campaign that took shape between 1994 and 2000 had a joint effect of stopping detectives having the necessary experience to tackle organised crime as the agenda moved elsewhere to tackling home-grown Jihadis and other issues around counter-terrorism.

Tell us a bit about your sources of information – how do you get people to tell you the ins and outs of these secretive worlds? And how do you assess/evaluate their reliability?

On the first part of that question, I think journalism is about getting out on the street, you can’t do it on the phone, you can’t do it on a computer alone. So I spend a lot of my time in pubs – obviously because I like drinking – but because it is a great leveller of getting police officers, criminals and people on the fringes of crime to talk to you. And they will talk to you in relaxed circumstances. That, however, has changed dramatically since the Leveson Inquiry into media standards and the effective criminalisation of relationships between journalists and police officers outside of a controlled press office environment. Therefore, the type of people I used to speak to for stories are terrified one of losing their pension if caught and two of possibly even going to prison. So it’s a lot more difficult now than it was before – but before, during the 90s and 2000s, because, as I mentioned earlier Scotland Yard was at war with itself over corruption issues, that created a lot of hurting detectives in that organisation. Any journalist worth their salt is able to exploit their pain for public gain, to get information about what’s going on and that’s certainly what I did.

And when it came to evaluating sources and their information?

In terms of evaluating, that’s a very interesting area – we’re currently in a sort of journalist policing space where believing fully in an alleged victim of crime has reaped some horrific results. For example, the recent imprisonment of Carl Beech for making up allegations about a VIP paedophile ring. That was the product of a swing in the pendulum towards police offers believing at the first instance anyone who comes in with an allegation of sex crime. Journalists have also suffered from that problem and I think that what we should do is neither believe or disbelieve but treat fairly and firmly. At the end of the day it is in our interests to establish whether we’re being lied to so that we don’t look like fools. When I’m dealing with criminals, who are notoriously slippery, or people on the edges of crime, I generally don’t believe anything they say until and unless they implicate themselves in the same crime they’re trying to implicate others in. That seems to me to be a good test; that criminals can gas on about any criminal activity that other people have done, but until they implicate themselves in crime to you they’re almost worthless. So I take that as a starting point. It’s interesting; when the police think about recruiting informants, who are largely and most effectively from the criminal world, they look at their motivations and they divide it into three main things: one is revenge, two is money – because police have an informant fund (I don’t and won’t) – three is to get rid of the opposition.

That’s how they gauge their effectiveness. Criminals aren’t going to speak to cops and implicate themselves in crime freely, whereas strangely the relationship between the journalist and the criminal is one where they can discuss their own criminality, sometimes boastfully, because they know that you’re not going to immediately arrest them or use that as leverage to make them become an informant. Basically, the first thing I look to is whether they implicate themselves in their own criminality, and then I look for corroboration, sometimes from police intelligence files and police officers and other criminals about that criminality.

For Queen And Currency (Bloomsbury, 2015) was Gillard’s exposé of Royal Protection Officers serving at Buckingham Palace

At various times the book reads like a film – are there plans to shoot the stories you have written?

The simple answer is that, quite interestingly, there is a mania in television and film land at the moment for true crime stories that can be turned into returnable multiple-episodic dramas. The problem in this country is we do it very badly compared to America, and there are other reasons for that, but the most obvious one for me is that crime is treated a lot more seriously and with respect in the US because they understand its implications for wider society from the lowest level to the highest level of government. In this country, we reduce it to a broken-nosed slap-dash Guy Ritchie-type approach. Within that, journalists trivialise their own patch by inventing stuff that they don’t need to and trying to apply the American mafia model to the UK. I’ve always said that we have a very unique organised crime climate here that lends itself brilliantly to drama. When I devised the idea of doing this book I wrote a synopsis and almost immediately it got optioned by a film and TV company in the UK looking for this multiple-episodic state of the nation drama who could see that something like ‘Legacy’ was effectively ‘The Long Good Friday’ 40 years on and in real life.

Talking of The Long Good Friday, it was written by Barry Keeffe who I had the pleasure of meeting and we discussed the poor state of affairs in how crime and cops and corruption are represented on the UK screen. He said it was because the writers write ‘from the outside in’ whereas Barry, a former crime reporter in East London, wrote ‘from the inside out.’ Broadcasters here commission from the same incestuous pool of writers who believe they can turn their hand to any genre with credibility when they can’t. On the other hand younger writers who’ve grown up with The Wire think they can write that here forgetting it was conceived and written by a former Baltimore crime reporter and a retired Baltimore detective – from the inside out – and that Britain has its own unique crime scene.

Talking of which, I was recently the victim of crime – a smash and grab raid on my copyrighted journalism to make a very clichéd British crime film with some high profile actors. It’s about to get ugly unless they make amends.

Do you prefer writing in book form or long-form journalism for daily outlets?

I think books are more enjoyable when you’ve got something to say, because the ability to combine your investigative skills with a writing space is quite attractive but difficult and I think that the carbonisation of news journalism makes it difficult sometimes to express the richness of the material you’ve already got, whereas books allow you to be a lot more expansive and draw the reader in. And I think that a narrative non-fiction style of telling true crime stories is great, which is why, if you have access to transcripts of covert conversations or surveillance logs they lend themselves greatly towards helping that narrative non-fiction storytelling which is essential in getting people to move across what are often very complex and dark criminal landscapes.

On a lighter note – who is the most interesting character you’ve written about or come across?

I don’t believe in glorifying criminals or cops. This binary narrative that you get in drama and true crime books of cop vs. robber is quite dull; I’m more interested in the professional journeys of flawed people who try to do good but do good for doing bad or vice-versa. Many have a very odd redemptive arc, are never perfect, fatally flawed and when I see that in individuals, if you can then interview them thoroughly to get into the elements of their life, how they think, you can try and do justice to them as individuals. Of those characters, the two I’ve most enjoyed writing about are Paul Page, a royal protection officer at Buckingham Palace who was the subject of my 2nd book, and Jimmy Holmes who was a criminal associate of David Hunt who then decided after they fell out to become a guerrilla gangster and do a lot of hit and run activity against Hunt to try and get back at him for what he felt was his self-emasculation under Hunt. Those two characters plus a third I would add, a black armed robber from West London called Hector Harvey, who was so smooth and clever he was able to have over his criminal associates, the Flying Squad and the anti-corruption squad in a masterful piece of duplicity.

Those 3 characters probably are the ones I’d say are ready-made films. In fact, I have written a pilot drama with my two colleagues Michael Holden and David Whitehouse about Paul Page, who ran a Ponzi scheme at Buckingham Palace during the great housing bubble, so the story is bookended between the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008.

Finally – what’s the next story you’re going to tackle?

I’m interested in how after the Leveson Inquiry into the so-called hacking scandal the media is being put back in its cage and on the back foot while big business and politicians are unfettered in their greed and corruption – I spoke earlier about the criminalisation of sources in the police – while this all happened, print journalists are becoming risk averse and controlled largely by lawyers worried about data protection and privacy issues. Meanwhile in the private sector, corporate intelligence companies are breaking the law willy-nilly and sucking up all your personal data instructed by pukka law firms on behalf of very ugly and dodgy clients here and abroad, be they corporations, oligarchs or captains of industry and I find that a very interesting area to look at for a book – the decline of journalism and the rise of corporate intelligence firms stealing your privacy and the revolving door with state intelligence and policing agencies.

Separately, and again with Michael and David, we are developing a drama around this idea of a newspaper investigations unit in an upmarket right-wing broadsheet operating in a post Leveson world. It’s called Monster.⬛️

Many thanks to Michael Gillard for this deep-dive into his world, and for the honour of being his literary agents. This interview has been edited for clarity.

Afghanistan to Zambia: The incredible career of Paul Wilson, author of Hostile Money.

Paul Wilson's incredible career has given him a ringside seat to many of recent history's flash points. His work as a soldier, diplomat, and agent of international commerce has taken him from Afghanistan to Zambia and everywhere in between. 

Paul Wilson's expertise on global politics and finance has been distilled into his debut book Hostile Money: Currency in Conflict, published on The History Press. Here, Paul Wilson talks us through the spectacular career that made him the expert on global finance and war.

Paul Wilson, you’ve had a remarkable working life, how did that happen?

I’ve been really lucky to have had the professional life that I set out to have when I left school decades ago, which was to have an interesting one. My principal objective was not to make lots of money, which is a good thing because in writing books I’ve discovered you don’t make a lot of money, not in writing the sort of books that I want to write anyway(!)

How did it all start?

After a very brief spell in London I went into the army and I served in all the usual places you’d expect: Cyprus, The British Army of the Rhine, and so on. It was really answering an urge to travel that I had already developed because my family had emigrated to Australia when I was 13 and come back when I was 16. So I’d already literally been around the world by the time I was 16 and that left me with quite itchy feet.

And you ended up in West Berlin?

Spandau Prison under joint British and Soviet control in The Cold War.

The last post I was posted to was in Berlin and was called BRIXMIS, the Commander in Chief’s mission to the Soviet Forces in East Germany. The original purpose of BRIXMIS was to liaise with the other side, the Soviet Army. The unit had other responsibilities which included supporting the management of Spandau Prison where Rudolph Hess, the last remaining living Nazi, who was imprisoned there after the Nuremberg trials. It was extraordinary for somebody of my era then to have the opportunity to censor the correspondence of Hess, and agreeing with a soviet counterpart what television or radio programmes he was permitted to watch or listen to, these were really enriching experiences.

How old were you at that point?

I was about 27 at that stage. Hess was already a very old man by that time. That was the end of my army career, I came out after that because I thought there’d be nothing equally interesting to do.

So you moved on from The British Army and into the diplomatic service.

Yes. At the end of my time in Berlin I moved into the diplomatic service. And again that was a hugely enriching experience. I had two spells working in departments relating to Eastern Europe and southern Africa. This included responsibilities for the London end of relationships with the ANC. A lot of ANC members were at that time still in exile in Zambia, so I got a trip out there to see some of these young ANC types who were going to benefit from scholarships to the UK. But I also had opportunities to visit other places like Angola which was also on my patch to look after. The foreign office did try to tempt me with a posting to Angola, but that didn’t strike me as quite so attractive, and instead I got posted to the British High Commission in Islamabad, Pakistan.

So from Eastern Europe, to the south of Africa, and then to Pakistan?

Pakistan was extraordinarily interesting because my responsibility was to look after our reporting on Afghanistan. At that time there was no British Embassy in Afghanistan, the building was there, looked after by a skeleton staff including Gurkha guards, but there were no British diplomats in Kabul and all the coverage of Afghanistan was done from Pakistan, and that was my responsibility. So I was travelling up to Peshewar on the north west frontier every other week; it was extraordinary to cross the confluence of the Kabul and Indus rivers and then to enter the North West Frontier Province. I had one trip travelling through the Khyber Pass with the United Nations on a visit to a de-mining operation in Afghanistan. And in 1992 I went on the Foreign Office’s mission to Kabul to establish relationships with the new Mujahidin government which had overthrown the old socialist government. So it was again, an extraordinarily exciting time. The time in Kabul with my colleagues from the foreign office had many interesting moments.

You were put into these very politically active situations in foreign countries, do you feel you made any progress there?

No, absolutely not. I think at the end of the two years clearly the old socialist regime that was just clinging on to power after the Russian withdrawal had been overthrown but it hadn’t been replaced by a more stable regime or a regime that was able to drag Afghanistan out of its terrible conflict which was initiated by the Russians in 1979 when they invaded. Whenever I think about it since I see very little to believe that we’ve made progress. When I came back after Islamabad I went back into the Eastern European section. I had more or less concluded that I was going to go out into the private sector.

So this is the next career transition, from the Foreign Office to the private sector…

The transition could hardly have been better, because I moved to De La Rue, a company that has been around for over 200 years. Its principal business is supplying printed currency to countries all the way around the world. So that means dealing with ministers, central banks, presidencies and so on in all sorts of different countries and the experiences of the army and the foreign office gave me a huge leg up in trying to work with people from quite different societies, conducting oneself cautiously with the top decision makers in those countries.

Were you interested in money before that?

Well I had no more interest in money than the average person, who looks forward to receiving some of it at the end of every month(!) But what was striking about working for De La Rue was just how interesting the company was. It was always very closely involved when something new was about to happen: when a new country was about to born, or a country was collapsing into turmoil, or emerging from turmoil. At one point in the late 80s early 90s it was managing elections for countries coming out of conflict: Angola, Mozambique, Bosnia, Cambodia. They also helped produce ballot papers for the first post-apartheid election in South Africa so it has this tremendously exciting world in which it plays, dealing with currency, passports, and elections.

Sounds perfect for someone who likes to be in the thick of the world’s current affairs!

That’s it. And I was fortunate to rise up the ranks of the organisation and find myself running the sales team for currency division which at various times was supplying to Iraq and Afghanistan, as they emerged from conflict, and that has definitely been drawn on for my book. Not only the broad experiences of the sort of things that happen when people have to make these decisions: ‘are we going to introduce a new currency or not?’, but also just generally it fired up my thinking in a load of these areas where I was responsible for advising the most senior people in the company: ‘should we be going down this route?’ ‘Is it appropriate?’ ‘Do we have to wait a little longer to see what pans out in this particular country?’ So that kind of political sensitivity, understanding what’s going on and how far you could and should go was definitely left over from the foreign office.

A childish question, but do you have a favourite currency?

Funnily enough I was always struck by some of the work that had been done by one of De La Rue’s managers for Cape Verde. He was very uncompromising in achieving designs for currency that were really world leading. Beautiful designs. It’s very attractive and it has an impact on people when they arrive in a country and say ‘Wow that’s beautifully designed!’. He ended up producing some really fine designs for Cape Verde, so they always struck me as really fascinating, very attractive.

Cape Verde! That’s a great curve ball answer, who’d have thought!?

Sometimes the more powerful countries have the more boring designs.

That’s interesting actually. It’s true that US dollars are very boring, and the UK’s always had quite conservatively designed currency, although I like the £2 coin. Why is that?

Well, I think some countries see the currency as more of a necessary statement about national pride, culture, ethos, and so on, than other countries do. It’s almost in almost inverse proportion to the power of the country.

And in this long career working in places around the globe, where have been some of your favourite spots, that still have a place in your heart?

Well, Berlin was a fantastic place in the 80s, and it’s still a fantastic place now. But I spent a lot of time in Central Asia covering Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and I think if I went back there tomorrow, I would not be lost. It would be pretty comfortable for me.

I imagine not many Brits can say that about Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan! And where should we be paying attention to now?

Now I’ve spent a lot of my time outside of the currency world, outside the world of De La Rue, and now I’m very focused on Iran. Since last year I’ve been running the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce. And in the time I’ve been sitting in the hot seat, it really has sharpened up, the whole US-Iran position. As you can see from the news these days it’s getting more and more fraught, more and more tense.

And once again your job’s given you a ringside seat! But Iran’s the place to keep an eye on right now?

Paul Wilson is currently running the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce.

Oh yeah absolutely, it is a test case for Trump and his whole style of government. It’s a test case for the UK which lifted sanctions on Iran in early 2016 in return for Iran giving up its nuclear programme. And everybody has agreed, the international atomic energy authority, and most national governments agree that they (Iran) have performed their part of the deal, whereas the reality is that I think they’ve got good grounds to believe that The West has not fulfilled its part of the deal, so it’s a big test case. And of course, we all hope that it doesn’t decline into open conflict.

And any other things we should be worrying about?

The thing that really gives me pause for thought at the moment is the dependence on the internet as a platform for our monetary systems. Everything we do now with telephone banking, and internet banking etc – we’re so dependent on the internet that that leaves us, our monetary systems very vulnerable to attack by cyber hackers. We’re now moving into a brave new world but one where our fundamental way of doing business is open to serious attack. The point is that governments need to have a plan B in their pocket. Because if someone decides they’re going to mount cyber attacks on an unprecedented scale to bring down a country’s economy, then you need to be able to have good old fashioned currency to hand. It’s no good leaving that to another day.

You’ve worked all over the world, you’ve been involved with some of the major global political issues of our age, when did the penny drop that you really ought to write a book about all this?

In my De La Rue time I looked at a lot of these issues not just as a sales opportunity but I was always interested in the political, military, diplomatic dimensions of what was going on. I was Director of Government Relations, when there was a lot happening in the world. There was a civil war erupting in Libya where the currency had a part to play, South Sudan emerged as the world’s newest country. And I had ringside seats in these things. And I was accumulating by that time so much knowledge and experience and expertise in the crossover between the commercial and the political worlds that quite a senior civil servant said to me, ‘You’re the guru on this sort of stuff’, this was around 2011, and I suddenly thought, ‘well perhaps I am, and isn’t this something I should be writing about?’. ⬛️

Our thanks to Paul for letting us interview him, and for the on-going pleasure of being his literary agents. Interview edited for clarity.

Paul Wilson’s book ‘HOSTILE MONEY: Currencies in Conflict’ came out in May on The History Press. The book covers the interplay of money and power across centuries of world history; from civil war in Ancient Rome to today’s economic sanctions on Iran. ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.

Edinburgh Science Festival

With one Artellus author now permanently based in the Scottish capital, and another starring in the Edinburgh Science Festival, Artellus Director Leslie Gardner took a trip north of the wall border.

For this month's Artellus blog Leslie reflects on a fun trip to see Andrew Elliott and his lecture on big numbers, and a rendezvous with Elmet's creator. Leslie writes...

“Edinburgh was glamorous even in the misty fog and rain they specialise in. Dodging the Brexit protesters in front of the registry office in Princes Street, I turned into the Old Town over Northbridge to find the arts centre housed in the Pleasance Theatre where the Edinburgh Science Festival is being held these days. The whole show was very professionally conducted by staff who I reckon will soon be holding theatre and comedy shows for the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe and International Performance Festivals. But today Science was the order of the day.

The children’s events that populated the daytime schedule were really quite sophisticated! They in turn were balanced by adult conversations in the evening. Enter our man Andrew Elliott whose popular blog Is That A Big Number? puts numbers and stats into fun and relatable perspective. Last year we sold Elliott’s concept for a book based on his blog to Oxford University Press. Today OUP had helped set up Andrew Elliott’s talk about his book ‘Is that a big number?’ at the Edinburgh Science Festival – he told a sold out room that a billion ants could line up the length of NYC’s Central Park – can you just see that? Well, that’s just about what he asked – with dollops of ancient history starting in early Greek times when mathematicians and geographers were the same people, who knew?

It was a fascinating lecture, followed by unusually good questions and talk (no ‘more of a comment than a question’ here!). Numbers and stats in the public mind are a political issue too – if you did not realise – when Boris Johnson talks about millions of pounds not only does he probably not know what he means, but we don’t either. But it sounds big. By all accounts a very successful and witty talk, afterwards everyone filed upstairs to buy a copy of the book, complete with signature of the night’s mathematical entertainer.

Again through Edinburgh’s darkened cobbled streets and to the pub, there to meet with Fiona Mozley. Having moved from her hometown of York, I find her fully ensconced in town with her spouse Megan, now entirely occupied teaching literature at the historic university. Meanwhile Fiona works on edits for her exciting new novel…”

Noireland Festival: Belfast

Friday 8th - Sunday 10th of March 2019 saw Belfast host NOIRELAND, a new International Crime Fiction Festival. The three day festival celebrated all things crime with panels, workshops, and talks. 

Artellus director Leslie Gardner was in attendance. Here she reports from the bustling festival in mid-Brexit Belfast.

Leslie writes...

A day in Belfast for The Noireland International Crime Festival. Decades after my first visit, it was an entirely refreshing occasion and a changed city. Last time when I was attached to the BBC Radio Drama Department police were everywhere on the streets, and you were constantly frisked. No photos then or your film would be confiscated – this time: sweetness and light, friendly locals, and I took a slew of pictures.

The organisers, like good detectives, had left no stone un-turned when it came to content: True Crime, the role of mothers in crime, the Victim Point of View, and talks from top crime writers like Stuart MacBride and Belfast’s very own Adrian McKinty (a revelation – as smart and funny as his main protagonist Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in a Protestant town when the Troubles were still in the air). The evening only built on the successes of the day– Gothic crime, social media crime, ‘outside’ crime, a rageful Brexit panel … and at the end of each event we were (quite rightly!) exhorted to go drink-up and buy their books.

Karen Sullivan, founder/editor Orenda Books was in attendance and particularly entertaining, cheering on various authors in the panels on her list. Seasoned readers, practising new crime writers, and published authors peppered the panels with questions. Attempts to hold down the rabble rousing in the Brexit meeting, and a pitch to create a viral event when two panellists threatened to get into a fight, were the tamer parts of the discussions.

The day was as relentless as the reading experience of these crime stories – dark and tough for the most part. No ‘cosies’ here! Darkened rooms, spotlit panellists, and no time to eat contributed to a dynamic and intense day. The quality of the talent and content on offer made it all worthwhile.

Adam Hamday’s scary explorations of the crimes on the internet caused many parents to think of denying their children smartphones.

Take, for example, Alex Reeve’s exploration of historical transgender issues in his crime novel. Set in a remote corner of the Scandinavian forests, the deaf and transgender Will Dean must hide who they are to escape being hanged as a murderer. Claire Allan’s ‘dark domestic noir’ is perhaps a new genre unto itself – and the involvement of children adds a new level of tough. Adam Hamday’s scary explorations of the crimes on the internet caused many parents to think of denying their children smartphones.

Brian McGilloway, Martyn Waites, and Declan Hughes warn us of the changing nature of crime with advent of Brexit (of which they are deeply critical). The current political dramas may be notable for their presence in the press, but for their absence in their novels; domestic and familial crimes instead of international thrillers and crime stories will prevail they determined… escapism. Spooky crime stories like Laura Purcell’s increasingly introduce the Gothic supernatural into the genre. In the process they supplanting traditional thriller themes, making it all much more up close and personal.

Throughout the day there were constant references to the trusted friends their editors had become in the writing process. Indications that agents were dampening (yet necessary) while editors more receptive. Once I’d had my fill I left those still standing to their drink and late-night final event of the day, listening to John Connolly’s new one. I trekked across town to my hotel behind Belfast Cathedral, thoroughly satisfied at the good talk and company. Here’s hoping Noireland Crime Fiction Festival proves to be a repeat offender⬛️

Saira Viola: Under The Influence

Saira Viola is a pioneering writer of fiction and poetry who splits her time between Italy, London, and Baltimore. Her experimental ‘Sonic Scatterscript’ style has been critically acclaimed by the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah and Heathcote Williams. Viola’s two novels Jukebox and Crack, Apple, Pop are published by the fiercely independent Fahrenheit Press who celebrate ‘Fahrenbruary‘ this month. For this month’s blog post we asked Saira to list three of her literary influences…

Dickens

Dickens has been a major influence and continues to provide me with a rich vein of source material to tap into. Few can equal Dickens when it comes to vibrant and eccentric characters, revealing the darkest of humours. Dickens has a Shakespearean heft and scale when describing villainy across the various strata of society. The characters bear the physical marks of a deformed society. Daniel Quilp, the shady money lender and ship breaker in The Old Curiosity Shop is a perfect example, with his ‘black sly eyes crooked long yellow nails,’ and ugly grin. He eats hard eggs shell and all and bites his fork and spoon until they are bent again. His protagonists experience a corresponding identity crisis as they struggle to reconcile the social conflicts that define their environment and inform their individual being. They provide a connection, a portal into the novel, to the reader who, even at this late date, experience much the same tensions. When I was ten, I was given a copy of Great Expectations. My family and I had recently settled in England after a blissful few years in Africa. I felt an outsider in English society alienated and alone, and so I immediately connected with the protagonist in the novel. Pip is unclear about his identity and desperate to leave the brutal poverty of his childhood and establish a new identity on the glittered streets of London. When I was mercilessly teased at school about where I came from Pip’s words struck a chord “It is a most miserable thing to be ashamed of home.”

William S. Burroughs

But for tone and style I turned to William Burroughs. I bought a copy of Naked Lunch during my angst ridden teens, going through a punkish phase. Reading Burroughs’ pyretic prose, for the first time was revelatory to me and ultimately freed me from self-imposed conventions I never even knew existed. The raw sex and violence inspired me to write without fear, to try a riskier style of prose. The poetic punch of Burroughs’ novels propelled the rhythmic style of my own work and much later, I developed and experimented with my own writing resulting in a style I dubbed ‘sonic scatterscript’.

Marvin Gaye

I am often drawn to art-forms outside of literature for models that suit my purpose. Which brings me to the importance of music. Certain musicians have been as important to me as the authors I admire, because the music of language is key. Take someone like Marvin Gaye, whose poetic street idioms, though deceptively simple, are weighted with great emotion and honesty. ‘What’s Going On?’ is a perfect example of Gaye’s song writing technique. The song is eternally fresh and manages to convey in only a very few lines the civil unrest and mood of dissent that characterised the end of the 60s. My favourite lines of the song are :

Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
But just talk to me
So you can see
What’s going on…

Thanks to Saira Viola for the pleasure of being her literary agents, and for providing us with February’s blog.

“I wrote a 200 page manuscript; my wife and I had an argument and she tore it all up!”


In this month's Artellus author profile, we speak with Jim Raven. Raven is a consummate crime author who writes under his own name, as well as the pseudonyms Jaime Raven and JP Carter. His hotly anticipated new series begins with In Safe Hands, released by Avon on 24th January 2019, can be ordered on Amazon here.

We spoke to Jim about being a full time writer, working under a pseudonym, and how crime fiction has changed with the internet age.

Jim, can you begin by telling us how you became a full time crime author?

I guess it begins when I was a child because my late mother was a big fan of Agatha Christie and Mickey Spillane books, and she encouraged me to read. So I read them and got hooked on crime books. I did write my first book when I was 15 but it was so bad it didn’t get sent off or anything.

I worked as a journalist for newspapers and I started to write, and had four early books published by Robert Hale. I then moved into television and became a TV news producer. I’d heard about self publishing and thought why not do it myself? I went on to Amazon and published through the Kindle Direct a couple of books I’d written and they were quite successful. After I became one of Artellus’ clients. I got another 5 books published by Robert Hale, before they were taken over.

Then I dug out of my drawer a book I’d written that I’d never sent off. It was half-finished and I can’t remember what it was called. I wrote it up and sent it to Leslie and she sent it off to Avon (Harper Collins), who took it on, changed the title to The Madam, and we did a three book deal with Avon.

And that’s when you took on the pseudonym Jaime Raven?

Correct, the book was slightly different to what I’d done before, it wasn’t a straightforward police procedural. It was gangster, gritty crime, so Avon wanted me to change my name. It was partly because they didn’t want me associated with the previous books. Also it was a gender neutral name, they were keen on that. Most people who reviewed the book referred to me as ‘she’ so that worked for them(!)

And now you’re writing under the pseudonym JP Carter?

Yes, I then came up with an idea for a new detective series which is slightly different again to the Jaime Raven books and Avon went for it. Because it was slightly different they wanted me to change my name yet again! The only thing I asked them, and they were happy to do it, was that I would like to refer to my previous names and to my real name. So in the first JP Carter book ‘In Safe Hands’ there is an explanation inside as to who I am and the fact that I’ve written books under different names.

What are the pros and cons of writing under a different name?

The main disadvantage is that it’s not my name on the book! For any author one of the greatest pleasures is to see your name on the cover of a book. It can be confusing when you do book launches and things you have to explain to people ‘actually that’s not me that’s not my real name’ If I’m in Waterstones and there’s a book by JP Carter it does take a bit of the edge of it if it’s not your name! So you do miss that.

Right, people will think you’re having them on if you point it out in the bookshop! And what about advantages of not writing under your own name?

I notice depending on the type of book I’m doing my writing does change a bit. I wrote several books under my own name, James, and they’re in the first person. And I got quite used to that, and then I decided to write a couple of books that were not in the first person. I think you develop characters more easily by not being in the first person. So I do that, and the JP Carter books are not in the first person so I’m concentrating a lot more on character development.

How do you think tastes in Crime Fiction have changed over, say, the last 20 years?

The main thing is the popularity of psychological thrillers. Going back many years I don’t remember reading many at all, but now the market is saturated with psychological thrillers. There’s much more emphasis on characters and characterisation than the plot. When I first started reading I was always focused on the plot: how to develop the plot, what action is taking place. Now I come at it from the characters and their backstories and relationships first. I try and come up with a main protagonist first before I develop a plot. That, for me, is the main change.

Do you think the recent popularity in psychological thrillers reflects a change in society at all?

I think it does reflect something in society: how social media has an effect on how we react. We look at Facebook, Twitter, all this stuff and you’re seeing how other lives are led. Together with that there’s a lot more news out there now: 24 hour news; online news; newspapers. There’s a lot more exposure of people’s lives and you’re seeing that it’s not just detectives and criminals who are getting up to stuff! You see normal people in newspapers or online that everyday are doing things that make for interesting reading.

Right, the mass exposure of private lives through the internet and social media, and it’s changing our cultural tastes.

I remember speaking to Avon about changing from the Jaime books which were more ‘Gangsters’ and ‘police’ to the new series. They wanted the plots to focus more on ordinary people rather than gangsters and that moves it more towards the psychological: a mother has got a secret, or a marriage is going wrong. So the newest book, In Safe Hands, centres on a nursery school, children are being kidnapped. A nursery school is something many of us send our kids to.

Interesting stuff. The time’s they are a-changing!

I can tell you another story about the way the life for an author has changed. When I was doing the first books for Robert Hale, many years ago, it was on a typewriter. I remember I wrote a 200 page manuscript; my wife and I had an argument and she tore it all up! And of course there was no backup! I remember I had to start it all over again.

Eurgh, what a horrible place the past was! Finally, what’s next for the many incarnations of Jim Raven?

Well I’ve got the three book JP Carter series with Avon. I’ve written one that comes out this month – In Safe Hands. I just finished the second one, ‘At Your Door’, which Leslie has sent to Avon and I’m just in the process of doing the structural edit. Then I’ll have to come up with another story for the third book. We’ll see where we go from there. So that’ll be three JP Carter books and hopefully more beyond that.

No resurrection of the 15 year old Jim Raven’s crime masterpiece?

I’ve no idea where that is!⬛️

Thanks to Jim Raven for speaking with us, and the ongoing pleasure of being his literary agents. Interview by Angus MacDonald; transcript has been edited for clarity.

“How do you translate bread?” An interview with Prof. David Coward.

David Coward is a professor of French literature at the University of Leeds and veteran translator of French literature. His translation of Arthur Cohen's Belle du Seigneur won a Scott Moncreif Prize. He is currently translating Georges Simenon's popular Inspector Maigret series for Penguin Classics. A Maigret Christmas is available now.

We caught up with him to talk translation, his newest Inspector Maigret, and the impossibility of exact translation.

David, could you start with a quick summary of how you got into translating?

I was teaching French at the University of Leeds and in 1986 OUP rang me up and asked would I translate The Lady of the Camellias, which I’d never read. I thought it might be quite dreadful, but of course I said yes. Later on I was asked by Penguin to translate a book by Albert Cohen called Belle du Seigneur which was really rather long and quite hard, it came out at about 1000 pages, but it won the Scott Moncrieff Prize. Anyway I’ve now translated about 30 books. I fell into it, if you like.

And how long did 1000 pages of Albert Cohen take to translate?

Oh god, years. I was working at the time, it was about 5 years on and off, I did other things as well.

What do you enjoy about translating?

I quite like translating because being a bit of a ham, I always think the translator gets to play all the parts, you can do all the voices you know? You are the narrator, all the characters, sometimes you talk in different accents, but that in itself can be quite difficult.

Talking of difficulties, what’s the biggest challenge?

One of the things you have to do as a translator is clear up the vague bits in the original text, because authors try it on, sometimes they will try an image and you’re not quite sure what that image means. You then have to interpret it and force a meaning on the reader and hope to goodness that you’ve got it right(!)

Then there’s the cultural challenges: for example how do you translate ‘bread’? Bread in English conjures up in the eye of the average British reader something that is square that you make sandwiches with and form triangles, whereas bread in french is something long you put under your arms. When you change the nationality of objects, then of course all the historical references that every nation has change with it.

Can you give a good specifically historical example?

Well, in terms of translating a French book from the German occupation of France, you talk about ‘semelles de bois’: The merry sound it made as you crack along on your wooden shoes because there wasn’t any leather around. But in England we wouldn’t understand that so you have to convey that without putting a footnote, which is terribly boring and taboo as far as I’m concerned(!)

Right! 100% direct translation is basically impossible, isn’t it?

Ultimately I suppose, direct translation is not possible. Somebody in the 16th century said when you read a translated book it’s really rather like looking at a Flemish tapestry from the back, you get a lot of fluff and inklings and the broad idea but the finer points skip you.

Can you think of any phrases or passages that really gave, or give, you a headache when it comes to translation?

Oh gosh. Well, ‘the cat sat on the mat’ is a bit of a snorter to put into French. Is this cat a male cat or a female cat? And when it sat, was it sat sitting? Or did it sit down, at that moment? These tenses are much more distinct in French than they are in English. Now what about your mat? What sort of mat are you thinking of: something behind the door? In front of a fire?

If you wanted to put that into French you’d bear in mind the general sense of what this sentence means, it’s heavily rhythmic and alliterative isn’t it? Now instead of making the cat sit down on some mat or other that I can’t actually translate, I would call it a female cat, ‘la chatte’, and then there’s a verb in French which is to scratch, which is ‘se gratter’, and then the word for a cat’s paw is ‘la pate’. So I would translate that as ‘la chatte se gratte la patte’ which gets the rhythm of ‘the cat sat on the mat’, and it’s just as nonsensical. But you see how something that appears to be quite simple is in fact fiendishly complex.

Sounds like a headache…

It does take a bit of time, absolutely. I mean, to talk about Simenon, it was his habit to lock himself in a room for 10 days with a pencil and paper and he would emerge with a novel ten days later in 20 chapters, and it took him less time to write the damn thing than it takes anyone else to translate it!

When it comes to Simenon, you’ve translated many books in the Inspector Maigret series, which is your favourite?

I think this Christmas one. It’s three longish short stories. The variety is very interesting and the stories are very compelling. It’s good Maigret stuff, it’s about the psychology of the individual, tracking what they do, judging them by what they’ve done, and then trying to second guess what they might do next. French detective fiction is very different to ours, we tend to go by ‘there was blood on the floor’ or ‘the train went at six forty five that day instead of half six’ therefore the butler is lying!

More quantitative clues?

That’s right! The french have gone according to the psychological makeup of the criminal which can be deduced from his actions.

Are the three tales straight up detective stories?

One is not really about crime at all but is a very subtle short story and full of humanity, which people don’t often associate with Simenon, because he has this terrible reputation for being a rather louche character, and the others are plain detection. They’re very satisfying because the wicked are brought to justice.

A big Scooby-Doo resolve at the end?

Umm, not my generation I fear…

I mean… a good Shakespearean resolution at the end?

Much better! Yes that’s the one.

Finally, the big question: French or English?

Oh English every time! Oh yes, English has got a wider vocabulary and is much more down to earth and its range is wider. The reason why the French have so much slang is because they their vocabulary has been reduced whereas ours continues to proliferate. It seems to me English is much more wedded to practicalities, whereas french is a language of abstraction. There are times where French can be opaque, although it seems clear, which explains I think, why until the early 18th century French was the international language of diplomacy because you can say nothing more elegantly in French than in any other language ⬛️

Thanks to David Coward for speaking to us, and of course the pleasure of representing him as literary agents. Interview by Angus MacDonald; transcript has been edited for clarity.