I ask you, who amongst us has not at some point wanted a few tips as to how to commit the perfect murder? Aha! Made you smile! However we'll just ignore that little glance you just made, the one where your eyes lifted from your iPad and leveled on that...

I have recently become quite curious about retirement. Oh not mine own, so put away the champagne. It would be an extraordinarily difficult achievement for a writer to retire. There's nowhere near enough money in it to build a nest egg, and besides that I'm not quite sure how a...

There are two things about April K. Hunter that will initially surprise you, yet both have massively contributed towards her skill and success as a writer. The first is that she has worked as a professional wrestler for nearly twenty years. All those years, all those miles, all those less...

Here's a Pro Tip drawn from the world of sportswriting: If you are ever called upon to write a match report – and in football that means you file within ten minutes of the final whistle unless you want to discover just how loudly an editor can scream into a...

Eventually we learn at least three things over the course of a long and frequently lively life – our wit and charm is not enhanced by copious drinking no matter what we think at the time, the pain of a loss lasts longer than the thrill of a win, and...

I suppose there really is a first time for everything. One starts to firmly believe that there is nothing – nothing! - new to be found between the covers of a book. After all, Aristotle nailed down the six elements of plot twenty-four hundred years ago and even the most...

I have a pen-pal in the Shadow Cabinet, a bond having been forged during the upheavals of the PLP's failed rising against Jeremy Corbyn. Ever since, on a irregular basis I have shared observations drawn from the experience of years spent fighting elections as a Liberal Party apparatchik in Canada....

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the...

I don't know about you, but as for me if I never hear or read the word meta again it'll be too soon, unless of course it's someone singing 'I Met a Girl' from that fine old musical Bells Are Ringing. It is not that I have any prejudice whatsoever...