Author: Cull and Co. Ltd

By Angie Sage

THE SPYMASTER’S WIFE began when my cousin, Juliet Clibborn, sent me a few pages of her memories of the early days of her marriage to her husband, John (Clibborn). She and John had had a very interesting and special time together and she wanted to set it all down for her children. But it was not easy to see how to do this.

But when I read the description of how John told Juliet about his ‘real’ job in the SIS, I immediately thought what a wonderful start it was to a novel. I suggested that maybe we could take these series of incidents in their life and turn them into a novel.

And so it began.

Juliet had about a dozen iconic scenes from her time in Cyprus and the challenge was to devise a plot, drop them into it and then people the book with interesting characters. We agreed that, in order to keep this purely fictional, all our characters would be unlike those who had been part of her life. However, we did stick to the basic arrangements and positions of the people she and John were surrounded by and the part they played in their lives. For example, there really was a downstairs neighbour who sent Morse code at night with the tapping echoing up the water pipes. However, he and his wife were nothing like Mike and Sandra.

Juliet and I met up and decided on the names for our characters, taking the main names from our family as a kind of tribute to them, but at the same time knowing that these fictional creations were nothing like them. For example in the novel we have called Elizabeth’s mother Peggy. Peggy is the name my own mother was known by, but Peggy’s character (with the exception of her driving ability and ATS backstory) is nothing like my mother. Like all the characters in TSW, Peggy is her own person and she grew and developed within the novel as all fictional characters do.

And so the novel began to take shape. I would write a few chapters and send them to Juliet who would read them and comment, particularly on the authenticity, because one of our main concerns was that this did reflect her experience in a real way. It was interesting and a fine line to tread.

For the political background I discovered that fifty years on there is a lot of information online. I was particularly thrilled to find a very interesting PhD thesis on the friendship and close ties between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots and that they even had a name: Koumbaroi. It is times like this when a writer knows that things are working out well.

Our aim for this book has been to reflect accurately the experience of a very young woman who found herself in the centre of a strange, and very hierarchical, male-centred world. And, along the way, to shine a light on what is now a vanished time.

The book will be published on March 11, 2027 and can be pre-ordered now.

Photography in the twentieth century was overwhelmingly a man’s world. Film sets, press junkets and celebrity portrait studios were dominated by male photographers with heavy cameras and bigger reputations. Yet from the mid-1960s onwards, Carole Latimer quietly built a remarkable career photographing some of the most recognisable figures in film, music and theatre.

Her memoir, Anything But a Still Life, published posthumously by Unicorn with a foreword by Julian Fellowes, tells the story of how she did it.

Carole was born in 1942 into a theatrical family. Her parents, Hugh and Sheila Latimer, were both actors, and she grew up in Hampstead surrounded by the cultural life of London. Her early career, however, was not behind the camera but in film publicity. It was during this period that chance intervened in a way that would alter the course of her life.

While working on the Austrian set of John Huston’s film A Walk With Love and Death, she began casually taking photographs. The legendary photographer Eve Arnold – the first woman to join Magnum Photos – noticed her and encouraged her to pursue photography professionally. That moment of encouragement proved decisive.

Carole’s first assignment came in 1967 at a party at the Hyde Park Hilton for the band Grapefruit. The room was full of pop stars, including members of the Beatles. Nervous but determined, she moved through the crowd taking photographs, hoping she had remembered the technical instructions she had been given. Among the images she captured that evening was a photograph of John Lennon – the beginning of a career that would span decades.

Over the following years Latimer photographed many of the cultural figures who defined their eras. Her subjects ranged from Barry Manilow in the 1970s to Billy Connolly and Bob Geldof in the 1980s, and later Rachel Weisz and Kim Cattrall. Yet what made her work distinctive was not simply the calibre of the people she photographed, but the intimacy she achieved with them.

Friends often remarked on her instinctive understanding of character. She had a rare ability to put people at ease and to sense what lay beneath the surface of a public persona. As her friend, the author and actress Elizabeth Sharkey, observed in an article about Carole published in The Times:

“She could read someone’s spirit as soon as they walked in the door. She knew how to bring out what was inside of them.”

Sharkey met Latimer in 2001 when Carole photographed her headshots, and the remark captures something essential about Latimer’s work. Many photographers could capture a likeness. Far fewer could reveal something of the inner life of their subjects.

This quality meant that many of Latimer’s most memorable photographs were taken not in studios but in private settings. One of her most ambitious projects involved photographing notable figures in their gardens – an idea based on the belief that the spaces people cultivate reveal something essential about their inner lives.

It was this project that led to one of the most memorable encounters described in the memoir: her long pursuit of Katharine Hepburn.

After writing to the actress and receiving a polite refusal, Latimer tried again two years later when she happened to be in New York. What followed was a curious ritual. Each morning she called Hepburn at nine o’clock, as instructed. Each morning the actress answered, only to say “Call me at nine tomorrow” before hanging up. The routine continued for three weeks.

Eventually the invitation came.

When the long-awaited meeting finally took place, the shoot itself lasted only minutes. Hepburn suddenly suggested carrying logs across the garden. As she lifted them, her characteristic tremor briefly stopped – and Latimer knew she had captured the moment. It had taken two years of persistence to reach that five-minute window.

Stories like this run throughout Anything But a Still Life. The memoir is filled with encounters that reveal both the glamour and the unpredictability of working close to cultural icons. John Huston teasing the young publicist on set. Dirk Bogarde welcoming her into his house in the south of France during the Cannes Film Festival. Long conversations over tea that slowly dissolved the formal distance between photographer and subject.

What emerges from these recollections is not simply a record of famous personalities, but a portrait of an extraordinary working life.

Carole Latimer never married and had no children. Photography was her central passion, and she pursued it with intensity and independence for more than five decades. Her work took her into private homes, onto film sets and into fleeting moments where public figures briefly relaxed their guard.

The result is a body of work that captures something rare – not just celebrity, but the human presence behind it.

Anything But a Still Life is therefore more than a memoir about photography. It is the story of curiosity, persistence and the unexpected opportunities that shape a life behind the camera.

And, fittingly for someone who spent her career capturing other people’s stories, it also serves as the final portrait of Carole Latimer herself.

Farewell to Russia is a book about independence. It contains what are essentially 15 coming-of-age stories, charting the journeys of the countries that were born from the ashes of the USSR in 1991.

I spent a large part of the mid-2010s engaging in arguments about independence. In 2014, it was Scotland and the Donbas republics; the subsequent years saw Greece’s aborted attempt to leave the Euro, followed by our own EU vote in Britain. In 2017 Catalonia made its bid to go it alone, while 2019 saw the twilight hours of democratic Hong Kong.

I was based in Beijing for the latter events and was surprised to find even the most liberal Chinese describing the peaceful protests of Hong Kongers as acts of dangerous extremism, playing with fire by threatening to split the country.

Before Beijing I had been based in Moscow, and I would often discuss Russia with my Chinese friends. In China, the breakup of the USSR is viewed as a tragedy, the general consensus being that the Russian communists had been weak in letting their country collapse. In the words of Xi Jinping, “no-one was man enough to stand up and resist”.

So, was the breakup of the USSR a good thing? I wanted to write a book about that one day.

False Starts

Despite my chequered travel history, I should probably note here that I am not a spy. Even so, bad things to tend to happen to His Majesty’s foes if I stay in their countries long enough.

In China it was Covid. As I joined the stampede out of the country in January 2020, it struck me that this would be an excellent time to begin the post-Soviet project that had been forming in the back of my mind. I would whizz round the former USSR in 2020, writing it up in 2021 in time for the 30^th anniversary of independence.

But the pandemic saw to it that I only made it as far as Poland. Unable to do any actual travelling, I scaled down my ambitions and set about writing a novel set in Moscow instead.

I returned to Russia in February 2022, wanting to add the final flourishes to the novel before beginning the USSR project. But, sure enough, another bad thing happened. Within three weeks of my arrival, Russia had invaded Ukraine.

I’ve spent parts of this war in both Moscow and Kyiv. In each I felt the same suffocating sense of paranoia. Life seemingly went on as normal, but behind the veneer of your average weekday was the ever-present threat that your world could collapse at any moment.

In Moscow it was the psychological pressure that ratcheted up. Flights abroad started to get cancelled, credit cards stopped working, and we half-jokingly voiced our fears that the KGB might snatch foreigners from their beds in the middle of the night. Then an American basketball player was arrested on spurious charges of drug possession at Moscow airport. Suddenly that joke wasn’t funny anymore.

I flew to Yerevan and felt an almost physical sense of relief upon being out of Russia. In my exuberance, I proceeded to get immediately blottoed in a brilliant establishment called Beatles Pub. This ended predictably well. I came back to the hotel and cracked my head open after tripping over my own suitcase.

As I recuperated, I realised that inadvertently, the book project had already begun. What with a war and a hospital visit, I grimly observed that I had a chapter or so in the bag. All that remained was the small matter of going to thirteen more countries, many of which were crackpot dictatorships, and one of which was in the midst of an invasion.

The Research

The travel practicalities generally boiled down to three things: 1) funding, 2) sources 3) route planning.

The first was reasonably simple. I was teaching Chinese students on most days. This was practical, although it did rather limit the more adventurous travel options. With students expecting regular classes, a journey over the Caspian Sea, a trek through the Pamir mountains or a sortie to the Donbas frontlines would have been difficult to justify to an ambitious Chinese mother who wants her son to pass his IELTS exam. However, teaching did provide me with time, I didn’t need to be back for anything and so could go about my intelligence gathering in a reasonably unhurried manner.

But how to gather that intelligence? How do you canvass local opinion when you’re not particularly well-connected?

There are always some trusty standbys: hitchhiking; haircuts; market-stall holders; passengers on long-distance trains, and, of course, bars. The fact that this book has been described by one critic as “a remarkable feat of drinking”, is testament to how seriously I took this research.

Cut-price guided tours at museums and running clubs were another unexpected boon. I made a particular effort to get outside each country’s capital, where the people were friendlier and the experience of independence was often radically different. All of the above usually provided a decent mosaic from which to work.

Certain people are overrepresented in the book – English and Russian speakers, of course – but also those prepared to talk to a foreign stranger, or stop their car to give him a lift, or those who respond to unsolicited messages asking for an interview. Generous people, in other words.

And I’m glad that the generous are well-represented. Having read so many books about the USSR, I find that there’s often a lot of portentousness, a lot of bullets in the back of the head, and the sense of a people battered this way and that by the great forces of history. What many miss are the ordinary individuals: hardworking, hard-partying and hilariously droll, with huge hearts and dark, sledgehammer wit.

The Writing

There are many books on how to write so I won’t waste too much time reflecting on it. To the extent that anything “worked” for me, every distraction has to go: social media; your love interests; your alcohol intake; your joy. Guard your time jealously. Meal prep for the week. Go running to clear your head.

If you’re still to find an agent or publisher, don’t read the work of your peers. Any positive ideas that you might get from them will be more than offset by the raging jealousy.

In London, the British Library and the National Archives at Kew are wonderful free places to write. There were good days when I would come home with a warm glow inside. But for the most part it is miserable and lonely. Aspiring authors be warned: you will get rejected, and you will suffer.

What worked for me was embracing the suffering. Seeing the work as an enormous, ugly lump of rock that you have to slowly chisel to perfection.

For non-fiction writers – get in touch with others in the field and interview them for the book. As a debut author, I found this intimidating at first, but many experts enjoyed the fact I got in touch. Prepare well for these calls, they’ll not only give you ideas to improve your work, they’ll provide an enormous release when you realise that others share your interest.

Coming through the process of writing a book, you’ll find that you have more empathy; you’ll be slower to criticise other artists’ work; you’ll spend more money on books, independent films and other creative endeavours; you’ll likely help out people in the same position; and you’ll be a stronger person for not having given up.

Farewell to Russia is out now, published by Elliott & Thompson.

In 2005, I was finishing up a term as a clerk for the Missouri Court of Appeals. I needed not only a job but a mentor. I learned an older attorney with an established practice was looking for someone to take over his business. He specialized in probate and estate planning, something I knew little about. But I was throwing out a wide net so I faxed in a resume.

Then I got a phone call.

“This is Rolland Comstock,” the smoke-engraved voice said on the other line. “I see you went to law school in Lawrence, Kansas.”

“That’s right.” I braced myself for the usual abuse I took for going to the historic rival of our state’s flagship institution.

“Tell me, who is the most famous author from there.”

Was this guy for real, I thought. But these kind of weird trivia questions were sort of my thing.

“Well, there’s Langston Hughes but he’s a poet. So I am going to say William Burroughs.” (The legendary beat author moved to the college town in his old age and the place became a Mecca for people like Kurt Cobain and Michael Stipe to visit and pay homage.)

I heard an exhalation of nicotine from the other end. “Yes, yes. That’s very good.”

Thus, started my relationship with Comstock. I learned, quickly, he wasn’t just any lawyer. He was also a renowned book collector who had been featured in “The Washington Post” and “The London Times” for his obsessive efforts. He had built a three-story library onto his home with chandeliers and rolling ladders. Dead authors at the top; living on the first level. He lived with a pack of hybrid wolves who trailed my every move and bit at my fingers.

While I loved the idea of working for him – we would talk about art-house movies rather than cases– the experience was dysfunctional. He was going through a divorce and the dispute over their house consumed his life. Rolland never came to the office so I never received any guidance. Plus, his money went to fueling the lawsuits with his ex-wife with little left to pay employees.

I lasted barely over a year. Rolland was murdered a few months later after I left.

My new firm took over his practice and I ended up getting to know his daughter, Faith. She hired our firm to represent her when she sued her mother in civil court for Rolland’s death. While no criminal charges ever got filed, a jury ended up saying his former wife of 38 years pulled the trigger that killed him.

I would tell the story of this eccentric lawyer and people would say it sounded too crazy to be true. That someone should write a book not only about the murder but about Rolland’s unusual life.

Yes, I would think. Someone should write a book about this.

The book is out now and published by Post Hill Press.

I wrote Timebomb by accident.

On the hundredth anniversary of Henry Moseley‘s death, in 2015, a flurry of history podcasts came out about his life and legacy. Because of my physics degree, I was familiar with the broad strokes: he was a brilliant young British atomic physicist, considered a shoo-in for the Nobel prize for his work on nuclear charge. He volunteered for service in World War One and lost his life to a sniper’s bullet at Gallipoli.

I listened to the podcasts with interest. I’d always been fascinated by Moseley’s tragic story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of conformity to societal expectations, particularly as they relate to gender. Although he could have been infinitely more useful to the war effort as a scientist (for example, his mentor Sir Ernest Rutherford put his skills to work developing anti-submarine acoustic technology), Moseley instead signed on as a soldier, insisting that as an able-bodied man it was his duty to be exposed to the dangers of combat. As a result, perhaps the finest scientific mind of his generation was snuffed out before he reached his 28th birthday.

The podcasts also revealed a fresh detail about Moseley. Just before departing for the war, he had written his mother a letter, saying that he would soon be sending her a scientific notebook, adding “I value it highly”. This notebook, the podcasts told me, had subsequently vanished.

My first thought was that this sounded like the premise of exactly the kind of novel I enjoy reading: an historical mystery with high stakes and the potential for international intrigue and skulduggery. My second thought was that somebody MUST have already written it.

When I discovered that no fictionalised version of Henry Moseley’s life existed, I began to imagine what the plot of such a story would look like. A notebook belonging to a brilliant atomic physicist had gone missing. What secrets might it have contained? Who would have been interested in acquiring these secrets? And how did the notebook disappear?

I kept my wife apprised of the progress of my imaginary novel as the plot gradually took shape in my head. Liz, herself a writer, encouraged me to write the thing, but no, I was only playing with ideas. Writing novels was something that other people did, and anyway, a novel was a huge undertaking. Who has that sort of time?

Several months passed, during which I continued to “play” with the plot of my never-to-be-written novel. I also read up on such diverse topics as conscientious objectors during World War One, the history of policing in the UK, atomic physics, and, oddly enough, whippet racing.

Eventually, it became clear to me that I was no longer simply playing at writing a novel. I’d created a workable outline and done extensive research. All that remained was to begin actually putting words on the page. I sat at my computer, took a deep breath, and started typing.

The journey from blank page to publication has not been a short one. What with writing, researching, and seemingly endless revisions, it has been a much longer road than I’d naively expected when I first started. For me, though, the time and the effort have been worthwhile. I hope that readers of Timebomb will feel the same way.

Timebomb is out now, published by Sharpe Books.

‘A superior historical thriller, which is both a murder mystery and espionage novel…for fans of Alan Furst and Philip Kerr.‘ – Thomas Waugh

It’s working title was HENRY’S BOMB, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Debut Dagger award and for the 2020 “Unhanged Arthur” award for best Canadian unpublished crime manuscript. It was also a finalist for the 2022 Killer Nashville Claymore award in the “Best Thriller” category

Kevin Bartlett was born in Colchester. He lives in Victoria, Canada, with his wife. He has degrees in both history and physics. He has lived in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States, working at particle accelerators, an astronomical observatory, and as a scientific fisheries observer.

Timebomb is his first novel.

All God’s Creatures is not a book I intended to write. It’s a prequel to my novel Fox, published in 2016, which at the time seemed complete in itself. Gradually, however, events got the better of me.

Fox was a satirical thriller about urban foxhunting and Chinese spies which proved weirdly prescient, since it involved a mass-surveillance system developed in Beijing and a virus whose spread the government was struggling to control. A minor strand focused on a militant religious movement called All God’s Creatures, which held that animals should be allowed to receive Holy Communion. The disruption it caused allowed the Prime Minister – under pressure from the Beijing government – to threaten the mass closure of churches unless the Archbishop of Canterbury denounced an underground Christian movement in China.

I gave little thought to All God’s Creatures over the next few years. But as the forces of political correctness gathered, I couldn’t help seeing parallels with some of the new movements that were sweeping the world. Suppose the All God’s Creatures creed actually was widely accepted and anyone who disagreed with it was cancelled: how, I wondered, might that come about? So I set to work on the story of Ben Fairweather, the editor of a religious magazine called Cathedral which is taken over by All God’s Creatures. As a result, Ben finds himself thrown into a world of Russian spies, art forgery and murder.

Ben’s experiences were based partly on my own. Like him, I’d worked on magazines turned upside down by mad directives from above. Like him, I’d mourned the death of a dog and speculated on whether animals go to heaven – the inspiration for a Cathedral article which draws the attention of predatory forces. And though, unlike him, I lack the skill to pursue a second career as a nightclub pianist, it’s something I’ve occasionally fantasised about.

In its original form All God’s Creatures was – at 39,000 words – very short: too short.  How could I make it more substantial? As the plot involved a forged painting, I hit on the idea of a back story for it: who had painted it and why. It happened that my wife and I had made several visits to St Ives so that she could study at its art school; while we were there, a local friend mentioned that people in witness-protection schemes were often settled in Cornwall because it was so far from London. So Kevin Murphy, a former gang member who discovers a gift for painting, joined the cast of characters. Weaving his story into the existing narrative was far from easy, but added to the richness of the novel.

Satire, like much of fiction, is a way of taking revenge on an unsatisfactory world, and in writing it I’m spurred on by things that annoy me. The targets in All God’s Creatures include Russian oligarchs, art curators and pretentious language. The novel’s main purpose, however, was to explore the way that fanatics can take reasonable ideas and push them to insane extremes. I hope that readers will find it thought-provoking as well as funny and exciting.