About Gill
When it comes to writing, I'm drawn to issues that trouble, inspire or amuse me. And I love language, so I might just play with that. I feel a responsibility to reflect the way we live now, rather than leaving it to some future historian. It's not just a question of 'writing what you know' - in fact, it's a good idea to write about what you want to know. But I have this delusion that in reflecting on the present, we help shape the future. It's hard to find an art form which is better adapted than the novel to examining the light and shade of human experience, and taking us beyond events … Read more about About Gill
Latest posts
Hark at them…
Another year, another Stroke Awareness month… I’m thrilled that Somerset libraries have taken the opportunity to join in, with this month’s podcast. Jeremy Thompson-Smith made the whole Zoom interview so easy… Perhaps too easy. My husband Terry, thinking we sounded so relaxed, assumed we must have finished and joined in to say hello. The […]
Yevtushenko on untruth… a verse translation
https://youtu.be/d-fQFMO7654 Back in March, as the war in Ukraine gathered pace, I became obsessed with the memory of a poem I’d studied as a sixth-former, by the Soviet poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Ostensibly about child-rearing, the poem describes the way the communist state seeks to infantilise the masses. “You shouldn’t tell untruths to little children.” But […]