Hello, and welcome to my website.
The head teacher delegated a smiling little girl to be our guide. She looked very pleased, about nine years old, pleasantly prim, and she set off along a corridor and led the way to a classroom, holding open doors, making sure we did not take a wrong turning, ensuring that other children stood carefully to one side to allow us to pass.My publisher had arranged this school visit to introduce my new book, and after I had read extracts and embraced question-time a cluster of children asked for autographs, and our little guide was among them so I put a tiny x against her name, a little thank you, and that seemed that and the morning passed until it was time to leave, but somehow as we reached the door another small girl appeared and held out her autographed page. And quietly she asked: Please, can I have a little kiss, too? The morning's readings were from The Drover's Boy, a first children's novel. Most of my life I have been a writer and have had a number of books published. Mainly they are about life a century ago in the English Lake District. Four of them are collections of old photos and two are fiction - Road to Paradise, a dozen or so adventurous short stories for adults set in Cumbria; and The Drover's Boy, which is also set in Cumbria and is being taken up both by children and adults. The stories grew slowly as I came to know about the people in the old photographs, so that gradually an underlying theme developed to tell a little of the lives of those long-ago times before everyone forgets. Apart from books I've been a sub-editor on The Daily Telegraph foreign desk, lived in Norway and Sweden, worked at the National Film Theatre, was a British Film Institute lecturer, and once set off into the blue with £95 and a rucksack and walked for months round Spain and Portugal. I have given lots of slide talks in Britain and some in America, mostly about old Lakeland and the quality of Cumbrian life in the old days. My publishers include Robert Hale, Smith-Settle Publishing, CN Print and Handstand Press. All have been good to work with, especially Handstand. Please have a browse, and thank you for looking in. info@irvinehunt.co.uk |