Guest Post with Writer Mike Robbins

‘…humans are maybe better than we think.’

‘…we’re lucky to have this thriving, lively city centre.. We have a thousand years of history and it seeps out of every brick.‘

✨ How long have you been writing for and what inspires you in your writing?

I wrote when I was in my teens, but not as an adult (except for work; I was a specialist journalist). Then in the late 1980s I was living in a mud-brick hut in a small town in Sudan. Work finished at 2pm because of the heat, and there was little else to do in the afternoons except read and write. I wrote most of my book Three Seasons there and finished it when I returned to England in 1989. But for many years after that I didn’t write at all. I was moving from country to country and was too busy.

✨ What inspires me in my writing?

The character I am writing about, the landscapes they move through; I’m mostly inspired and driven by those, not a point I am trying to make. An exception was The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán, a novel that highlighted western hypocrisy about the drug business. Even then, though, it was the main character and the way she drove the story that interested me. I think the best books take shape that way; the characters acquire a momentum and behaviour of their own, and in the end they will drive the writer more than s/he drives them.

✨ What are you working on at the moment?

Mostly short stories; I only started writing them a couple of years ago but am now nearly ready to publish a collection. In the meantime they go on my blog. But I also do some non-fiction pieces that I put online; these can be about books, or they can be about history, or both. The latter are usually 4,000-6,000 words. I’ll do two or three of those this year, one of them a look at the books that have been published about the pandemic and what they tell us, six years on. I collected some of these pieces into a book, On the Rim of the Sea, which I published in 2022.

I do have a novel in progress. It’s about two-thirds done, but has been stalled for a long time. It’s set in England in the very bad winter of 1947, with its shortages and power cuts. I wanted to understand who we were then and how people felt, exhausted after a long war and now dealing with all that. It was also that winter when several hundred thousand German prisoners of war were allowed to leave their camps in the daytime, work and mingle with the locals; what on earth was that like? It’s a book I care about a lot; I am very invested in the characters, and I would like to finish it – but I don’t think I will. It has been very difficult to write.

✨ What are you most proud of in your life?

I wonder if it’s for me to say. I suppose I’m most proud of my decision to go to Sudan for two years in 1987, working for the country’s Commissioner for Refugees. I was originally told it would be Indonesia or Thailand and then they switched the posting. I wondered whether I was up to it and nearly didn’t go. It was a couple of years after the Horn of Africa famine, and the Sudanese were coping with a very large number of refugees. My role was to try and produce information about what the Refugee Settlement Administration was doing in the region; it was about communication with international donors and NGOs, but also with the Sudanese people of the region – Sudan had treated refugees well and even practised the mass-granting of asylum, but inevitably there were stresses and strains with the local population. On the other hand, though, what did I achieve for people when I was there? I can’t judge that.

I’m also quite proud of my PhD, which I got when I was over 50. I found it very difficult and was amazed (and very tired) when I staggered to the end. My thesis later became one of the first books about the links between agriculture and climate change.

✨ Which book (or two) would you push into the hands of everyone you know and say ‘you
must read this’?

The answer to this changes as I discover new books! But also, why do you want people to read a given book? Do you want it to change the way they think, or do you just want them to enjoy it and feel nourished by it?

It’s the first motive that often makes us want other people to read a book. In my case I’d want people to read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, a novel of ideas that sets out the conflict between the logical and enlightened, and the instinctive and emotional. He was writing just as fascism was taking shape in Europe. It’s now back, so it’s a book that resonates today. It also has some beautiful and vivid moments. But Mann did need an editor; it is very long, far longer than it needs to be.

You can also want people to have a vivid experience with a book and feel it’s added to their lives. For that I would single out J. B. Priestley’s 1946 novel Bright Day. This was Priestley’s own favourite book. It is a beautiful and elegiac story of coming of age, war and remembrance. Priestley was a popular writer and was unashamed of that. But Bright Day is special.

I’d also nominate a couple of books by W. G. Sebald. The Rings of Saturn is a remarkable journey through a landscape and its connections. But I’d also pick Austerlitz as a reflection on what the Holocaust meant for those who survived it, and had to pick up the threads of their lives afterwards. For me, history is not so much a collective process as an accretion of individual agonies, all experienced in different ways. In fact that’s what Dr Zhivago tried to tell us, I think. Sebald understood that just as well, but put it more subtly; Austerlitz is about human connections that falter, and love that does not quite catch fire, because of the damage that has been done to someone through their loss of identity. It is a beautiful and
thoughtful novel.

And there are other books that I think are magical. They include Heinrich Böll’s postwar novella The Bread of Those Early Years, about how love can redeem a society from moral bankruptcy. It is a book that says a great deal in 34,000-odd words.

✨ What gives you hope?

We need hope just now, don’t we. It’s been a grim few years.

Two things I suppose. First, I worked in some quite hard places when I was younger and I did meet some of the best people on the planet, both locals and internationals. That can lift you up, because you see that humans are maybe better than we think.

The second thing that gives me hope is the rapid development of clean energy and technology. I have known the basic facts about climate change for a long time, and it frightens me. But we do now have the tools we need to deal with this. In particular, changes in battery technology are going to be crucial in the next couple of years, along with a growth in energy generation at household level. Political will is still needed, and often lacking.

Trump’s attitude to climate change appals me. And we are still going to have to make some hard choices about the way we live; food and aviation are going to be especially difficult. But we’re seeing progress every day.

✨ Where’s your favourite place?

I lived in some amazing cities all over the world. Norwich is one of the better ones. I like to sit in front of City Hall on a fine day looking out over the market – we’re lucky to have this thriving, lively city centre. And so much has happened here. We have a thousand years of history and it seeps out of every brick.

I do miss New York, where I lived for many years when I was at the UN. I lived close to Central Park and came to love it. And I used to stand on Brooklyn Pier and watch the lights come on in Manhattan. I also loved Rome, where I worked for a year or two at the turn of the century. And for a strange and magical few years I lived in the Himalayas. But these were places I knew I would have to leave eventually.

✨ Who or what inspires you?

A good Tempranillo, usually. A Brahms piano quintet also helps. And now and then I do get inspired by a really good book; it can make me want to try and write something good myself, or strengthen my optimism about the world.

✨ What advice would you give to others who are at the start of their writing journey?

The most common advice you hear is, ‘Just get something written’. I think that’s good advice, but I’d add that you shouldn’t be too ambitious; if you embark on a major project and do not finish, you’ll get discouraged. I’m guilty of this! I’d also say, don’t expect too much encouragement from friends and relatives. Some will like what you do, but most won’t care. Any interest and support will come from strangers.

A Train Journey

“I say, my man,” said Desmond. “When will the 4.10 from Worcester arrive?”

“About 4.10, sir,” said the porter. He ambled off down the platform, scratching his armpit.

“Dammit. Everyone’s so unhelpful nowadays,” said Desmond.

“Darling, do sit down.” Daisy guided him to the nearest bench. “You know what the doctor said about not stretching the wound.”

He was about to say something rude about the doctor in reply, but decided to enjoy the afternoon instead. It was an early-summer day with not a cloud in the sky. Here and there a swallow flitted. The sole other sign of activity was a small grimy tank engine that had steam up but seemed disinclined to do anything with it.

At length a plume of smoke and steam appeared on the horizon. The 4.10 arrival from Worcester Shrub Hill approached with a loud, self-important whistle, the engine’s green livery resplendent in the sunshine. It hissed to a halt; few people got off. “There she is!” said Daisy. Desmond’s sister stepped slowly down. She carried The Times and The Sketch, but neither looked read. Her cloche hat was pulled down rather low across her brow, but he could see a livid bruise around her eye and on her cheekbone.

“Dammit, he’s given her a shiner,” he whispered.

The porter brought her luggage from the guard’s van on a handcart. To Desmond’s surprise, there were several cases and a steamer trunk; he realised that she expected to stay for some time. He tipped the porter a florin, and kissed his sister on the cheek.

Then there was a sharp pain from the wound in his leg. “Would you mind if I sit down? Just for a minute,” he said. He sank back onto the bench. There was a loud hiss and the pulsing of steam as the train left the station. The quiet of the summer afternoon returned.

“Did you have a good journey, darling?” Daisy was asking. She spoke quickly, and was brittle. “You must be tired. We’ll go straight home. It’s a lovely afternoon, isn’t it. Cook is laying the tea in the garden and we can – “

Her husband interrupted. “What on earth has happened, my dear?” he asked his sister.

“He hit me. He was drunk,” she replied.

“The bounder!” he exclaimed.

“Not really,” she said. “I mean, none of you are all right any more, are you?”

“No,” he said. “No, I suppose not.”

“It’s all right, dear,” said his wife. ”It’s all right.” She sat down beside him. “Let’s go home for tea. Cook’s done a lovely Victoria sponge and we’ve got a saddle of lamb for dinner.”

He felt the soft kid leather of her glove close around his hand.

To read more of Mike’s writing, visit his blog here. Thank you Mike for coming on to my blog and best of luck with all your writing endeavours!