Mark Liam Piggott

Reading the collected essays, journalism and essays of George Orwell, I’m struck not only by his beautifully clear, precise writing – eighty years later it’s as if he’s talking directly to me – but by the way he was able to report on a world which to the middle classes was as unknowable as life in the Sahara. His reports from Lancashire and Yorkshire for “The road to Wigan Pier” are some of the best reportage I’ve ever read; almost dispassionate, honest, true. How many journa

Last night I returned to one of my former haunts, Clerkenwell, for the launch of “Tea at the Grand Tazi” by the lovely Alexandra Singer. Great to catch up with some old friends from Legend Press and meet some new people, including fellow Manc Alexandra and her family. The event was filmed by a Chinese TV station and Alex has also been on the BBC and Sky, so it looks like her book will be a great success. Afterwards I had a drink with the redoubtable mister Tom Chalmers and we

We set out early on the 29th: north, to Rovaniemi, home of the "real" Santa Claus. It was dark until around 11 but the No. 4 motorway was relatively clear of snow until Kemi, a few miles short of the Swedish border at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia, where we turned inland. Here, in the swirling snow amid the endless birch forests, we ate burgers and nuggets in a vast supermarket, kids playing on a indoor climbing frame, old folk waiting for their bus in the warm. As

Saddened to read of the death of one of my (few) heroes, Christopher Hitchens yesterday. I only recently read his brilliant memoir, Catch-22; he was one of the bravest (physically and professionally) writers around. Not enough like him – and more specifically, not enough editors out there with the guts to publish (for want of a better word) the truth. Also just finished Lee Stringer’s “Grand Central Winter” yesterday, really good read; lots of witty one-liners and very good o

Recently I was asked to contribute a short story to an interesting project called "Still", by artist and photographer Roelof Bakker. Roelof has taken a series of haunting photographs in a disused town hall and wanted some stories to accompany his images; my fellow Legend Presser Andrew Blackman kindly put my name forward along with several other Legend authors. Roelof offered up a selection of images, and invited each writer to write a story based on that image alone - an int

Yesterday I went with Legend big cheese(y) Tom Chalmers to Manchester, where we took a workshop on the subject of "getting published". We were joined on the panel by authors Max Malik, whose "The Butterfly Hunter" is out now, and Georgina Kamsika, whose book "The Sulphur Diaries" is also out soon. Both were very lucid and seem to know what they're talking about - "unlike you", I hear you mutter. Our venue was the library in Longsight, which is both modern and welcoming; sadly

A few months ago I was lucky enough to see my novelette, "ten thousand hours", published in the excellent new literary magazine "Prole Books". Now they've published another of my stories, "never trust a man with egg on his face", in issue 6. A strange, dreamy story about hot air balloons, carnivals and Paris, with a title borrowed from Adam and the Ants, this is one of the strangest stories I ever wrote. Here's a sample: "Their fingers – his dirty white, hers clean brown – un

London, Tripoli, the cares of the “real” world all melt away in the heat… After a week or so you adapt, to the new rhythms, of space and time and fresh air: days merge, sweet sweaty nights roll together like naked bodies beneath damp sheets, new situations (“problems” would be to overstate the issue) arise and are swatted aside like the sleepy old flies on the tiled patio. Swimming pools, for instance: who could ever imagine that swimming pools have complications? Each mornin

What could be more relaxing than sitting with the kids in Kentish Town McDonalds as cop vans screech past on their way to the latest...

“When I was fourteen my father invited me on a round-the-world trip. Never having been further than France I was thrilled, but there was a problem: I was due to start “O” levels and couldn’t go. As I waited for the bus to school each morning, my dad’s exclamatory writing on postcards from Bali and Perth was smudged by hard Yorkshire rain and disconsolate tears...” Read the rest of my article bemoaning restrictions on removing kids from school, why I think local authorities ha

“And what do you do..?” What do I do? Tricky one that, at parties; not that I get invited to parties. My preferred title would be “writer”; but then people usually pull a face. “A – waiter? A rater?” The trouble is if I say “author” people think that’s all I do; and when I’m approaching newspaper editors they don’t particularly care that I’ve had novels published – can I write features? If I say “journalist” then I’m usually thrown out of the (non-existent) party, or at l

If it’s not one thing, it’s another: on the same day our four-year-old stops wetting his bed, one of the cats develops cystitis and commences spraying the duvets. Having identified the culprit (and apologising to our other cat) my wife crams one large unwilling moggy into one small box and is about to depart to the Harmsworth, leaving me to “work” in peace, when she remembers something: “Oh – I just heard on ‘5 Live’ that apparently our fridge may explode.” After wifey’s depa

Having recently spent a fair amount of time around various hospitals as my gran was treated for lung cancer, it struck me quite often that although the medical care generally seemed good, the admin side often fell way short of providing a decent service. Read my article about why even the NHS’s firmest supporters (ie, people like me) must admit its occasional shortcomings over at spiked-online.

The pint of Addlestone’s before me is cloudy, cold, well-earned; today, having delivered my two children to the primary school which will hopefully instil in them that work-ethic so sadly lacking in my own flawed persona, and distributed emails to various editors, agents, cat-litter suppliers and my colonoscopy-expectant father, I trudged grimly through Waterlow Park, past all the benches in memoriam, past the sixth-form girls in pleats and boys smoking substances, to Highgat

When I start writing, it isn’t always clear if what I’m doing will end up as a short story or novel; I just have this germ of an idea I want to explore, and if I’m lucky it takes on a life of its own. Whereas my first book, “Fire Horses”, was the result of twenty years of drinking, fighting and – um - “socialising” in London, “Out of Office” was based around a simple premise: how long you could work in an office without colleagues noticing you’d gone insane. “Ten thousand hou

Me dad came down from Yorkshire for the big anti-cuts march through London so I decided to go and keep him out of trouble. Having been kettled at Oxford Circus back in 2001 I can spot the signs; first glimpse of exits being sealed and we’d be off. As a kid dad took me on many marches – CND, END, anti-apartheid– but in recent years I’ve tended to stay away. The last major march I went on was the 2003 antiwar march, and then I felt deeply uncomfortable about some of the placard

For many years I had this recurring nightmare: I’m on a beach and suddenly a vast tsunami engulfs me. It reached a point where I would just be on this beach, or cliff, or in a city by the sea, get this sinking feeling in my gut and know this is it: here comes the big wave (hello Mr Freud, how’s things? How’s your mum? Good, good...) Oddly, after the Boxing Day disaster of 2004 the dream stopped; I’ve never had it since. But large waves remain a source of fascination to me, an

This afternoon I had the privilege of speaking at a protest-cum-celebration at Highgate Library, which Camden Council want to close. As someone who spent a great deal of my childhood in my local library, and uses this one regularly along with my kids (both of whom were in attendance today), I feel strongly that libraries are an integral part of our heritage,our community, and our future. Last year I spent a great deal of time in Highgate Library, and what struck me was not on

Last July, the outstanding “Open Wide” magazine were good enough to publish a short I wrote, “the man who buried himself”. Now you can read it here – so long as you promise to subscribe to Open Wide, obviously...

In today’s Guardian, a number of public figures, including some I respect (Benjamin Zephemiah, Bob Crow, Jeremy Corbyn) and others I dislike intensely, write to condemn David Cameron’s recent denunciation of“multiculturalism” at a mass rally (sorry – “security conference” in Munich. In my new novel, “Out of Office”, Britain is being run by a Coalition government, an ongoing terrorist campaign threatens to bring chaos to the streets, an EDL-type militant group threaten reprisa