Mark Liam Piggott

"OK, hands up: I voted for Jeremy Corbyn to be the new Labour leader in 2015. My reasons were sound at the time: I woke up in the night in a cold sweat, realised my politics were beginning to drift to the right, decided that was a betrayal of all my family have stood for over the past 100 years and concluded that yes, I wanted Jezza to be our Great Leader. Then I went back to sleep..." Read the rest of my comment in the Independent HERE.

Delighted to announce that my second novel to be published with Legend Press, "Out of Office", is finally available on Kindle, seven years after being published in paperback. With themes including Islamist terrorism, governments in turmoil (!) and multiculturalism, the book remains as relevant as ever - and it's available on Kindle for just £3! What they said about “Out of Office” “Piggott’s writing conjures evocative portraits of individuals lumbering between political corre

"The decision by the Supreme Court to find against parent Jon Platt in his battle with his local education authority is both outrageous and debatable. Mr Platt took his daughter on holiday for a week during the school term in 2015 and was arbitrarily fined by Isle of Wight council for doing so. Platt successfully fought the verdict in the high court, yet for reasons best known to themselves, the council decided to take it to a higher authority. Where next, if they had been un

Between 9th November 2015 and 9th November 2016 I didn't touch a drop of alcohol. Not even vodka on my cornflakes. I did it for a number of reasons - health, charity, just to make sure I could - and actually really enjoyed it. Except for a few times when I didn't so much. Anyway, I'm delighted to announce that my feature about the experience is in today's Sunday Times Magazine. Here's the standfirst: "For those nearing the end of dry January, what is it like to go teetotal fo

Just been interviewed by Eddie Mair on Radio 4's PM about why I'm coming round to the idea of Brexit. Or rather, having "lost" (I voted remain), why I now think it's probably time to stop whinging and get on with it (as I wrote in a Spectator piece shortly after the referendum). Hopefully I managed to get a few progressive ideas across along with all the waffle... Judge for yourself here - my bit's near the end. Listen to the whole show though - it's got some really interesti

Well, I made it. Didn't touch a drop of booze between 9th November 2015 and 9th November 2016. What a bloody year. Bowie, Brexit, now Trump. Enough to drive you to drink. Many thanks to all who are sponsoring me for Children in Need. You can keep sponsoring me till November 2017 and I will MATCH all donations up to the first £1,000. That's the #PiggottPledge. (Type that into Twitter to see my relentlessly depressing updates from Day One). Here's a link to my Just Giving page.

"The digital age brings new freedoms, new convenience, but also new irritations - and new forms of crime. The world of justice struggles to keep up with the myriad ways cyber criminals use the internet, social media and smartphones to steal our money, privacy and time. New crimes mean new punishments. Sticking some autistic nerd in a prison cell is both archaic and counterproductive: he (always he...) will only make himself a Wifi connection out of soap and boot polish and es

It's so easy to make excuses for not writing. No time, no money, bills to pay, I must eat, etc. However I have found I am now completely out of excuses, thanks to an incredibly generous grant courtesy of the Royal Literary Fund which will enable me to complete two novels I've been working on for some time: All the Brutes (working title) and Emptiness. So, thanks a bunch RLF. Thanks to you, I'm going to have to write something good. No excuses left. Damn.

"Of all the guff churned out about Isis, the refrain that we are engaged in a ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘battle of ideas’ is uniquely moronic. Isis doesn’t want civilisation. As for a battle of ideas – what ideas? Isis doesn’t have any, unless you count an apocalyptic fight to the death in Dabiq or Rome. We are reliably informed that Isis includes some very intelligent people who spend years planning terror attacks. Yet it took the, ahem, ‘conflicted’ Mohamed Bouhlel – tha

To my amazement, I returned home from France (which was lovely - don't let a few idiots put you off) to discover I'm the recipient of a generous award from the Authors' Foundation 2016. The award will help me complete two novels about which I have high hopes and enable me to think about plots and characters rather than how to pay the bills (for a while). Although of course many of the characters of my books also have to worry about bills, so I won't forget my roots... Truly g

"When asked to fill in my nationality – and when the option’s available – I always specify ‘English’. Partly because I don’t have an ounce of Scottish or Welsh blood, but mostly because the very name ‘United Kingdom’ has lost all meaning. We are disunited. Brexit v Remain, North v South, Corbyn v Everyone. And – we are informed by those in the know – Old v Young..."

"I loathe labels but used to be described – indeed described myself – as a socialist. Perhaps as a result of having been conceived at a conference of sex-pest Gerry Healy’s Socialist Labour League (SLL) in Morecambe, then christened (or rather, named – my family are atheist) Mark after Marx, I never had much doubt about which side I hung. "My father’s family were working class, Methodist, union-organising, tenant association-running, pro-Suffragette, anti-bomb. Many of my hap

"I woke up on 24 June with a sense of impending doom. It was no doubt linked to the fact that after voting the day before, I had undergone an operation and so was waking up in a hospital bed. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was also waking up to the news that Britain had voted to leave the EU. It soon became clear that I wasn’t the only Briton who’d been badly bruised by the events of that historic day. On the airwaves and social media, angry Remainers were voicing their

"Last Thursday 23rd June I entered hospital for surgery. The operation was minor but I reacted badly to the anaesthetic and as the night wore on entered a state of semi-delirium. By 11 pm I was straddling a toilet, gown flapping, oxygen tubes up my nose, tubes in my arm, listening to David Dimbleby make reassuring noises about the UK remaining and passing these on to two lovely Romanian nurses attempting without luck or enthusiasm to insert a catheter..." Read the rest of my

"It’s far too early to tell if the latest opinion polls suggesting the people of Britain and that little bit of Ireland will vote Brexit next week. Political pundits often insist you can’t infer anything from opinion polls, but in this case I think you can: the public are cretins..." Read the rest of my latest Huffington Post here.

"All this week (12-14 April) publishers and agents will rub shoulders and egos at the London Book Fair. This annual PR stunt will probably only make the headlines if some teenage wunderkind gets a six-figure advance for some nonsense, possibly involving a zebra with Munchausen's who decides to get a job. Except of course he or she (almost certainly a she - publishers do like good-looking chicks) won't receive anything like six figures - and after vanishing without trace will

When I was a child I couldn't relate to many books. Then I read The Blinder by Barry Hines and it just felt so real: washing your face in a sink filled with dishes, cold Yorkshire mornings, the comp and football. That book was the first to put in my head the idea I might try and write. About 10 years ago when doing my MA at Manchester University I had to do a project and decided on "the life and works of Barry Hines." Having read all his novels - I also loved The Heart of It,

"The hour-hand dragged by gravity down to six: Time. No gentlemen, no "please", even time running low. As he pushed at the bar door ("PULL") then adjusted his technique (passerby snigger) billow-clouds of unguent warmth kissed cheeks cold from the long post-round and he felt them colour like dusky sunlight on a corn-field stinging a face whose eyes had frosted and now melted warm salt onto grizzly chops burning as he stood as if a stranger at the entrance of the busy public h

Just to let you know, I, Mark Liam "Thirsty" Piggott, am taking a year off booze for my kids, my liver, my brain, my writing and for charity. I'm not ill, hungover or even particularly worried about how much I drink - I just want to prove it's possible to give up something you love for a good cause. (For all of you who never drank or for whatever reason stopped for good - I salute you.) Over the coming year (which is of course a bloody Leap Year) I'll be writing and Tweeting

This morning I received a hard copy of "More Raw Material" - work inspired by the great Alan Sillitoe. It's a beautiful book, containing stories, poems, art and photographs which in their own way each emanate something of the soul of the great man. Truly proud too that it contains my short story, "Picture This." Congratulations to Neil Fulwood and David Sillitoe (yup!) for their hard work, fantastic production and energy. There's nothing like a proper book: you flip it, sniff