I won’t go into too much detail about me but I think it’s probably worth giving you a little background just now. I’m Scottish, live in Edinburgh, I’m married with three grown-up children and we’ve got four grandchildren. I’m a retired academic who was once a banker and I’m in my late sixties. That very last bit is quite important mainly because it focuses my attention on making the most of the time left to me (bit morbid, I know) and enjoying doing this. However, I suppose it also has an enormous influence on the books and authors that appeal to me and has provided me with masses of material to discuss on the blog. As I’ve said in the introduction, it’s the characters/heroes that I especially like about the books I read and, once I find someone I like, I just devour their creators’ books.
Just to try to show you where I’m coming from with this and perhaps to relate it to my age again, when I was younger, I had heroes or role models or idols, whatever you want to call them. Please just stick with me on this as it is going to get me to the main topic very soon. I’m talking about famous people I liked or admired for whatever reason. The main ones (some of whom you’ll obviously have heard of while others will be less familiar or not familiar at all) were and still are Rod Stewart, Kenny Dalglish (perhaps the greatest Scottish footballer of all time), Ian McShane in many roles but principally the antique dealer, Lovejoy, Trevor Eve when he was Shoestring and Denis Waterman when he was Terry McCann in Minder. As I say, some you will know, some you won’t. Just google them and, if you do, you might start to see why I’m drawn to the authors, books and characters I like.