The family link between Hopkins and Gainsborough
The other night I talked about and read from The Hopkins Conundrum in Sudbury, Suffolk, as a guest of Gainsborough’s House art gallery....
Why it’s time for a Hopkins revival
Here’s the text of a blog I wrote for Foyles on why next year’s centenary of Hopkins’ first publication will be an excellent time to...
What really happened on the Deutschland?
Hopkins gave the nuns a heroic role in his poem but the real truth, as eyewitness accounts made clear, is more prosaic. Here's the text...
Yes, judge a book by its cover – but which one?
Today we sent the proof copies of The Hopkins Conundrum to be printed – which was an exciting moment because it meant we had finalised...
In the footsteps of Dame Muriel
I’m not the first novelist inspired by The Wreck of the Deutschland. I hadn’t realised it when I started out, but I’m following in the...
The site of the wreck
YESTERDAY we went to Whitstable, the ancient fishing port on the North Kent coast which has been famous for its oysters since Roman...
Hopkins and me
I WAS BORN in Chester, not far from the part of North Wales where much of The Hopkins Conundrum was set. My mother was Welsh, and it was...
The sisters at rest
THE BODIES of four of the five nuns on whom The Wreck of the Deutschland is based were brought ashore at Harwich and then taken to...
The real St Vowelless’s
THIS is St Beuno’s, the Jesuit college near St Asaph in North Wales which was home to Gerard Manley Hopkins while he was composing The...
