In the summer of 2018 I bought a copy of Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop whilst on holiday in Aldborough, on the east coast of England. It was exceptional weather, with huge skies, endless shingle beaches, and great places to swim. The Bookshop, set in this very same landscape in the year 1959, was excellent holidayContinue reading “Encountering ‘The Bookshop Novel’”
Author Archives: David Graham Clark
New textbook on the social aspects of care at the end of life: a surprise project
In the autumn of 2022 I was a couple of years beyond the institutional world of full-time academic employment. I’d been putting my efforts into new forms of writing, such as reflective biographical pieces, garden musings, and short stories. I’d also written a play which had been well received at the Edinburgh Fringe that summerContinue reading “New textbook on the social aspects of care at the end of life: a surprise project”
Cicely and David: screenings in Belfast and Dublin during Palliative Care Week 2025
Twenty years ago, whilst working at Lancaster University I travelled regularly to Ireland. Supported by the Irish Hospice Foundation, I was a Visiting Professor at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, charged with enabling and promoting academic and strategic development in the field of palliative care. Over a four year period I visited manyContinue reading “Cicely and David: screenings in Belfast and Dublin during Palliative Care Week 2025”
Lammas in the garden
It’s a time in the annual cycle that I have come to appreciate more and more over recent years. The beginning of August seems to bring a shift in the ‘feel’ of the summer. After the heady freshness of June and the hectic weeks of July, we somehow move into a period where the naturalContinue reading “Lammas in the garden”
Reflections following publication of my first novel
My debut novel Epiphanies and Robberies came out this summer. It tells the story of three people who find new friendships and ways of looking at things, as they simultaneously get drawn into sleuthing a series of art thefts that breaks out across their home region in south west Scotland. I have tried to writeContinue reading “Reflections following publication of my first novel”
A distracted month of June in the garden
Three things obscured serious attention to the Dumfriesshire garden this month. I was heavily involved in the logistics of ‘launching’ my first novel. We were away on a short but garden-rich holiday in the Cotswolds. At home, the weather was unpredictable, occasionally too hot, sometimes cold and breezy, and mostly very wet!
Starting a local Writers’ Group
I’d never been a member of a Writers’ Group, though some of my writing friends are long term enthusiasts. So I’m not sure why in the autumn of 2024 I had the notion to get such a group started in my home parish. Kirkmahoe is a small, rural community in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, madeContinue reading “Starting a local Writers’ Group”
May be or May be not
In my forthcoming debut novel and in effulgent terms, I describe May in south west Scotland, where I live. May can be the finest month in the Nithsdale year. Through the woods, bluebells nod in drifts. Along the loanings, cow parsley froths and swaggers. The lovely campion and cuckoo flowers are everywhere in the grassland.Continue reading “May be or May be not”
Lost in the allotment garden
There was always a laid-back air at the Tír na nÓg community gardens. Working collectively, growing fruit and vegetables organically, and sharing the produce equally, its members, youthful in the 1960s, were continuing their dreams in later years. Some evenings, blues-inflected guitar music would drift across the plots. On hot afternoons, a few folk mightContinue reading “Lost in the allotment garden”
April come she will
April can seem full of deception. Promising much, then failing to deliver. Eulogized by the poets for its splendour, but also exposed by them as painful and cruel. The gateway to Spring, it still has frost on its back. Not for the first time in my life, I associate it this year with death andContinue reading “April come she will”
Quotidian 