

True Story - bad plot!
On how I grappled for a gun - but could never use it in a book ... Let me tell you a story, and before we get started, let’s break all...


There may be trouble ahead ...
As Alfred Hitchcock once said, people tend to be most frightened not when something happens, but when they are waiting for it to happen....


More Bio - Getting to "Whitebridge"
When he was sixteen, Alan applied for a scholarship at Atlantic College, the international sixth form boarding school in Wales, which, at...


Spain after General Franco
It is hard for most people to comprehend what a grip Francisco Franco had on Spain, but perhaps one story will illustrate it. Franco...


First Memories "Salton"
Alan (aka Sally Spencer, in case you didn't know) was born, a few years after the end of the Second World War, in Marston, a salt panning...


The Empress comes calling
Actually, the Shahbanou - Empress of Iran - comes calling. The school where we worked was on a new development at the edge of the desert,...