You may well have noticed we've a new book in the works. As mentioned earlier, Congregation of Innocents takes its inspiration from the late great Shirley Jackson who passed away fifty years ago this year.

One writer who is a fan of Jackson's work, and has in the past provided an introduction to a selection of her stories, is the also great Patrick McGrath.

A strange business, being kept from sleeping because of a news story. The news is essentially information you’re told about people you don’t know. And yet, the other night, there I was, unable to sleep because all I could think about was those photographs of Aylan, a three year-old boy who died in the sea and washed up on a beach.

Has any other novelist been as richly served by cinema as Patricia Highsmith? Strangers on a Train, Plein Soleil, The American Friend, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Two Faces of January. Not all masterpieces, but still a pretty good record by my reckoning.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,

I stand and look at them long and long.

Writer's writer is one of those phrases which, whilst intended as a compliment, has a faintly off-putting ring, implying boring elegiac tales in which nothing happens. Not so with Aickman.