Category:Alan Hamilton

I've always been drawn to events in real time where there are unresolved questions or mysterious circumstances. Examples would be the sudden and complete disappearance of a celebrated British MP, Victor Grayson, in 1920; the identity of the unclaimed remains of two juveniles in the Charfield rail accident of 1928; Julia Wallace, the middle-aged housewife battered to death in her own Liverpool home in 1931; the vanishing of Lord Lucan in the 1970s, and the fate of Jill Dando in 1999.

These kinds of situation intrigue me so much I find it easy to weave a story round them. I’m not offering a ‘solution’, rather a ‘how it might have been’, and the people in the stories, both representing the real ones and those I invent, live with me and take on characteristics via my imagination and a great amount of research into the background.

From early days I wrote a lot of essays, which earned me honours at school and a good degree in Modern History. A career in large multinational organisations honed the skills of writing to persuade others to endorse my proposals and strategies, and a master’s dissertation got me a distinction at the age of 60. Words have been the staple of my life and even now, deep into retirement, I work as a freelance editor and proofreader for a global publisher. My taste in music runs the gamut from Bach to Offenbach. If I haven’t got the earphones in, then my nose is in a book, printed or electronic.

Finally, I have a wonderful place in which to write. I look out onto the sweep of the Severn sea in north Somerset. A view for all seasons.