Click on one of the below to be taken to that section of my blog archive:
General blogs: cultural appropriation, virtue signalling
Great Indian Novels – 10 reviews
Inside India: 50 short articles covering India’s past, present and future
Blogs about crime and literary festivals
Blogs about literacy and libraries
The Writer Whisperer Speaks
Anxiety and the writer … The Writer Whisperer Speaks #1
General
Cultural Appropriation (part 1): why people need to get a grip
Cultural Appropriation (part 2): when authors crash and burn
Cultural Appropriation (part 3): when authors get it right
Virtue Signalling: what is it exactly and is it even real?
Chilled Monkey Brains and Snake Surprise: when popular films promote racial stereotypes
Race Reports, George Floyd, and John Grisham’s A Time to Kill
Inside India: 50 short articles covering India’s past, present and future
Inside India #1: The Indus Valley Civilisation – India’s oldest organised society
Inside India #2: Ashoka the Great – from mass murderer to Buddhist
Inside India #3: Marco Polo in India
Inside India #4: The Peacock Throne – seat of Mughal Emperors
Inside India #5: The Spice Jews of India
Inside India #6: Thug Life – India’s Thuggee cult, history’s most prolific serial killers
Inside India #7: Kashmir – paradise on Earth?
Inside India #8: The curse of the Koh-i-noor Diamond
Inside India #9: India’s greatest queens
Inside India #10: The $4m Gaitonde – India’s most expensive painting
Inside India #11: A brief history of Indian spices
Inside India #12: The handstand scorpion – how yoga became a global phenomenon
Inside India #13: The Queen in India… Gaffes, snubs, pageantry, and political intrigue
Inside India #14: India’s tea plantations and why there’s no such thing as chai tea
Inside India #15: India’s railways – nostalgia, bloodshed, and records
Inside India #16: India’s Freemasons – ritual, mystery, and Imperial legacy
Inside India #17: Simla – summer capital of the Raj
Inside India #18: Eating the dead – the Parsees of India
Inside India #19: Christian missionaries in India – churches, cartridges, and the clap
Inside India #20: The truth about the Black Hole of Calcutta
Inside India #21: The Bombay Dog Riots
Inside India #22: The Indian Mutiny – how a bullet cartridge ignited a rebellion
Inside India #24: Mumbai’s The Divine Comedy – the treasure for which Mussolini offered £1m
Inside India #25: The Indians who invented fingerprint classification
Inside India #26 – Red India: Communism on the subcontinent
Inside India #27: Ramanujan: the man who dreamed of infinity
Inside India #28: The forgotten fallen – Soldiers of the subcontinent in WW1
Inside India #29 : The Amritsar Massacre – a mass murder that ignited a revolution
Inside India #30: Older, bigger and brasher than Hollywood – India’s film industry
Inside India #31: Gandhi’s Salt March – bringing down an empire with a handful of salt
Inside India #32: The Indo-German Conspiracy in WW1
Inside India #33: India’s Tiger Legion – when Indian soldiers fought in the German army
Inside India #34: The Ghosts of Partition
Inside India #35: Killing Gandhi – the man who assassinated the Mahatma
Inside India #36: India after Independence – Nehru’s defining decade
Inside India #37: Bombay’s jazz era
Inside India #38: India’s billion dollar temple treasure and its cobra guardians
Inside India #39: The Headhunters of Nagaland
Inside India #40: The Emergency Years
Inside India #41: From Bombay to Mumbai: India’s city of dreams
Inside India #42: Slumdogs and skyscrapers – what Danny Boyle got wrong about Mumbai’s slums
Inside India #43: “Hello, my name is Dave” – India’s call centre phenomenon
Inside India #44: Drought, suicide and Artificial Intelligence – the plight of India’s farmers
Inside India #45 – Big Fat Asian Weddings… and the costs they impose on the poor
Inside India #46 – Cricket: the subcontinent’s most popular religion?
Inside India #47 – The Indian Civil Service: when bureaucrats ruled an empire
Inside India #48: A Land of Diversity
Inside India #49: An Indian on Mars?
Great Indian Novels
Great Indian Novels #1 – A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Great Indian Novels #2 – Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Great Indian Novels #3 – Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Great Indian Novels #4 – The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga
Great Indian Novels #5 – The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Great Indian Novels #6 – The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Great Indian Novels #7 – A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Great Indian Novels #8: – Sacred Games by Vikram Chanda
Great Indian Novels #9: – A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Great Indian Novels #10: – Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
Blogs about how to improve your creative writing
Is this a dagger I see before me? Lessons from 30 years of writing
When History brings time to a standstill…
Genesis: where do book ideas come from?
Overcoming writer’s block – the Holy Grail of Writerdom
Lessons from Harper Lee – how to write that all important second novel
Do writers need a special place to write
Forensic science and police procedure – how the investigative procedure really works
Blogs about crime festivals and literary festivals
Theakston’s at Harrogate: a criminally good crime writing festival
Granite Noir – Aberdeen’s festival of firsts
A paean to Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Festival
Bradford Literature Festival – a unique cultural experience
Emirates Literary Festival Dubai – a desert extravaganza
How to make the most of World Book Day
New Year’s Resolutions for writers (or how not to be a dick at networking events)
Blogs about literacy, reading and libraries
Librarians – the real Guardians of the Galaxy
Indepdendent Bookshop Week – why buying local can make you happy
The joys and woes of the independent bookseller
Vaseem Khan 