Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir.

Add my name Data centres are springing up all over the UK – using massive amounts of electricity and, in many cases, huge amounts of water. The UK is already facing water shortages, high energy demand...

Dear Andy Burnham: it’s time to scrap First Past the Post. Our voting system only breeds instability and chaos, and poisons our political culture. We know you agree. Now is the time to fix our demo...

I ask the Government to set up a National Commission on Electoral Reform, as advocated by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections. It should be an independent, time limited, expert led re...

Villanous Saltpetre (1962) is the latest Clifford Witting to be released by the splendid Galileo Publishers. In 1930, Guy Brangley, an unsuccessful playwright, stages his own disappearance as a public...

I asked my friend Moira over at Clothes in Books if she would read Dumas’s novel with a view to our both blogging about it. This is my offering and I can’t wait to read hers. And now here it is: https...

Fracking in England isn’t over − yet. Right now, there’s a temporary ban on fracking. But it’s not written into law, and loopholes mean so-called low-volume fracking could still go ahead. This leaves ...

It must be about twenty years ago that Ra Page at Comma Press asked me if I would be interested in submitting something for a collection of horror stories dealing specifically with modern life. I said...

Take action Our investigation has uncovered a disturbing truth: “sustainable” timber from Malaysia can’t be trusted. Certification schemes are failing, so timber linked to forest destruction, wildlife...

It takes 30 seconds

Every now and then I come across a book that I go on thinking about long after I have finished it and I know I will return again and again. One such book is I Was A Stranger (1977) by John Hackett. In...

I recently came across this old article of mine I had in The Times over 20 years ago, and it gave me an idea. For a couple of weeks I'm goi...

Community action stopped the climate-wrecking Whitehaven coal mine. Now, its backers are suing the government in a secret corporate court – and UK taxpayers could pay millions. Polluters should never ...

Nigel Farage's Reform party has declared it wants to “drill baby drill” if it wins the next general election. There’s a temporary pause on fracking in England, but it’s not even written into law. So i...

Our democracy shouldn’t be a gamble. First Past the Post fails 70% of voters. We urgently need to scrap it. I’ve asked my MP to attend a crucial briefing on how to do just that. Join me 👉

Crime for Christmas: Five Festive Reads: here they are in order of publication Dorothy L Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934). Ok, so not Christmas exactly, but close enough. It is a snowy New Year’s Eve w...

My last post was about buying new books. It’s a great pleasure, but perhaps not quite such a pleasure as a trip to a second book shop and finding books that you didn’t even know you wanted as well as ...

Welcome to Los Angeles, where anything can happen, and usually does…

Yesterday I decided pretty much at the last minute to book a ticket for Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts, a play which is having a short run at the Lyceum in Sheffield. Of course I am curious to see h...

The devastating anthology, “Voices of Resistance,” reminds us that despite our overwhelming grief, we won’t be alone forever

The government has just suspended refugee family reunion – the main safe route for children to join their refugee parents in the UK. We can’t let them tear families apart in our name. This cruel decis...

Matterport 3D Showcase.

Yesterday was the first day of an exhibition at Sheffield University of material from the archive of my late husband:  Peter Blundell Jones: Architecture, Landscape and the City. I went to see it with...

‘This is why your bus is always late’

DEATH AMONG THE DONS Part 2 One of my favourite novels with an academic setting is Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes (1946), which is set in an female physical training college. Hers is in many ways a...

A couple of years ago, I gave a talk at Alibis in the Archives at the Gladstone Library and promised to post it on my blog. What with a house move and other distractions, it slipped my mind. But here ...

Recently I was asked to write about three books or writers that I return to again and again. It was hard to choose just three, because I do a lot of rereading, particularly at times of great stress or...

Photo: Hassan's 13 and 11-year-old daughters found safety from Taliban persecution, after years without seeing their dad Deaths at sea are at a record high. More children than ever are forced to risk ...

A couple of weeks ago I was thrilled to receive a review copy of Clifford Witting’s, Silence After Dinner, the latest of his crime novels to be published by the splendid Galileo Publishers. It isn’t s...

For me as for many other crime-writers a shadow fell across the day last Friday when I heard that Peter Lovesey had died. He was a giant among crime-writers and won every award going, sometimes more t...

‘Un petit pincement au coeur’ can be translated as ‘a little pang in the heart’. Years ago I was on holiday in France and read a notice on the door of a shop that had recently closed. It explained tha...

National Commission on Electoral Reform

While shelving books of poetry on my new bookshelves, I came across a copy of a Penguin Classic, The Last Poets of Imperial Rome. I seemed to remember that there was something special about it, and when I opened it, I found this inscription ‘To my dear friend, Chrissie, “Youth’s the season made for joy,” […]

At the beginning of the year, I gave my word that I would lighten up on all the Agatha Christie stuff. I did mention some projects – and then I let the first one pass without comment. I mean, I did…