Literary Lunches

I've posted the picture below because I can!! I'm the good looking chap in the blue shirt and that's Will Self next to me. The picture was taken when Will met me late last year at the BBC's studio in Aldwych, London. It was at the recording of Radio 4's Book Club, when an author discusses one of his books with a small group of readers. We were discussing How The Dead Live, his last novel.
The narrator of the book is Lily Bloom, and wonderfully cantankerous soul. Sadly she has breast cancer which kills her fairly soon into the book. In Will's imagination, the dead don't go to heaven or hell but to Dulston, a non-descript London borough. Death doesn't mellow her on little bit and with her lithopedion, she takes to following her children around, commenting on their lives and loves, while she gets used to being dead and the petty bureaucracy that goes with it. Just read it.

I'm going back the week after next to meet another one of my literary heroes. More of that closer to the time though.