When they were Young

Archelaus, my hero, is 19 in 1720, the year that Pullen is set. The illegitimate child of a nobleman and a theatrical performer, Archie has never met his father, who dies shortly after the novel opens.

As I want him to gradually develop enough feeling for this man he's never known to want to avenge his death, it is important that he gain some sense of him. So in the course of visiting an old friend of his father's, Archie will see a set of miniatures painted in about 1676, when his father would himself have been nineteen - and on the Grand Tour with his friend Ervin.

It was customary for young men to have themselves depicted in full classical antic mode, with ruined columns, rent curtains, toga-type gowns and bits of armour. I wouldn't imagine - no matter what the skill of that year's modish artist - that it was always easy to make a young man look good like this:

(Nicholaes Maes, Portrait of a Young Man, 1676)

But for every ten chaps who looked a bit burkish, there was always one who managed to look cool no matter what get-up he was shown in:

(Unknown artist, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, c. 1665-75)

Archie, who is not immune to a bit of vanity, will have his first throb of fellow-feeling for his father when he sees how much they are alike.

Tell it to the Bees

It's not often that I descend from the 18thC to the present day, but even I'm willing to make the trip for my friend Fiona's latest novel (her fourth) - Tell it to the Bees (publ. Tindal Street).

Told through the eyes of a young boy, Charlie, growing up in the 1950s, it is the story of the dissolution of a marriage and development of a love. It is subtly and gently told, and utterly gripping. I read it in two sittings.

If you've just finished a book or are looking for a present for someone else, I couldn't recommend it highly enough if it were my own!