Mild and Bitter

[James Twining]

Safely back from Austria (definition of a good break = only 2 nappies changed in four days!) and straight into the bear pit that is the London Book Fair. Luckily I checked my invite before setting out because I was all set on grabbing my passport and making the trek over to Docklands where it was last time round.

This year the festivities were in the far more civilised (relatively) surroundings of Earl's Court. My invite was courtesy of the Theakston's Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate where I am on a panel discussing Daphné du Maurier - yes, in case you're wondering, I'm s***ing myself at the thought of being grilled by an audience of DdM anoraks!

I swung by the HarperCollins stand on my way in and had the good fortune to find J-Lo (my agent) locked in conversation with Amanda Ridout, the MD of Harper's General Books Group and VERY IMPORTANT. The good news is they promised me that they had big plans for promoting The Gilded Seal. The bad news is that we agreed to dicuss it further over lunch - based on their reputations, it could get ugly.

That brief diversion meant that I timed my entry into the Harrogate event perfectly, arriving just in time to hear the final speech being applauded and to be immediately collared by Laura Wilson who:

a) is scarily sharp
b) is on the same panel as me at Harrogate; and
c) managed to freak me out even more than I already am, by listing all the du Maurier biographies, novels and short stories she has already read. Immediately made a mental note to order entire collected works from Amazon as soon as I got home that night.

Then bumped into the loveley Natasha Cooper / Daphne Wright (I can't keep track of all her psedonyms) who always makes such an effort to help me by introducing me to journalists, other writers etc. She's not quite my fairy godmother, but she's not far off!

Also in attendance was the mild mannered Simon Theakstone (he of bitter brewing fame - see how I cleverly worked in the title?) who greeted me with the rather wonderful line: "Ah! It's so rare to meet a young man drinking beer out of a glass", nodding sagely, as if I had passed some sort of unspoken test. It reminded me of that classic scene in From Russia With Love where Bond identifies the enemy agent by the way he orders red wine with fish.

There's a lesson there for all of us. Drinking out of a bottle may well reveal you as a Smersh spy.