Five times 15.
Hi, thanks for having me.
You know, after spending 10 years researching and writing Caledonian Road,
this seems a nice opportunity to pause for 15 minutes and think about how it came about and what that relationship with some of those big Victorians was all about.
So many of the people who have written about the book in the last two weeks have used the word Dickensian.
And although that was often a word somewhere in my head,
I don't know if I've ever sat down for 15 minutes and really worked through what that would mean.
He's certainly one of my favorite writers and he's been there kind of on my shoulder as a sort of whispering advisor through all the years that I was working on this book.
I want to take you back a wee bit further first.
When I was about seven or maybe eight in primary three as we call it in the UK,
I had a teacher called Mrs. Doherty who encouraged us to write something called our news book.
So our news books were I suppose to practice our handwriting, but I took the job slightly seriously.
And every morning when I arrive in class and there'll be 30 kids in our rows and I would start writing my news book.
And very quickly it became clear to Mrs. Dougherty and to me
that I was appointing myself as a slightly frontline reporter from the living room back home.
So my coming and going farther and my slightly upset about Mum would be would find themselves fully described in the news book of this eight year old.
And the teacher called my mother in and said, I don't know what it is about Andrew,
but he seems to sort of have taken the idea of news a bit literally and he's become a bit of a reporter.
So the situation in the holy barley at home is all being fully described in the newsbook.
That was an early showing, I think,