Nigel Richardson
About Author
Nigel Richardson is the author of two previous books, Breakfast in Brighton and Dog Days in Soho. Now a full-time writer, he recently left The Daily Telegraph after 13 years as the Deputy Travel Editor, a post that took him all over the world. He has also written several plays and a drama series for BBC Radio Four. Born in the Midlands he grew up in Yorkshire and Sussex and now lives in south-west London. He is a big fan of dogs and of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC.
Interview
The Wrong Hands has been lurking in the creative corners of Nigel's brain for some 25 years but it's really the last three that has seen it develop from a neat idea into a fully formed story. It was written twice, once as an adult novel and then, following an epiphanic meeting with his agent, as a teenage novel. He explains, 'I feel that there is a tremendous clarity and innocence about the child's eye that most of us lose in adulthood. I think my agent saw that quality in the character of the original book, even though he was supposed to be mid-30s, and that made the conversion to a teenage novel very easy and appropriate.'
'The idea behind the novel', Nigel explains, 'is simple. Just suppose that someone, somewhere, somehow could perform a feat science tells us is impossible. No faking, no illusion, they could really do it. People wouldn't believe it, wouldn't believe the evidence of their own eyes, because we know, we have been programmed to know, that such things are not possible. And this struck me as a very interesting metaphor. In fact, what is happening now politically is a case in point. I do not believe for instance that there is a significant terrorist threat to this country, but few others believe that. And in fact everything that the government is doing to 'counter' the threat is making it more likely. Now the book is not an out-and-out political allegory, but I did want it to kind of have those elements - to work on the level of a good story, but also to have a resonance.'
Although a great deal of the book is rooted in Nigel's journalistic experiences it doesn't exploit any specific real-life stories, just generic stories that occur quite frequently. Nigel explains, 'Every week something happens that mirrors events in the book, e.g. a plane or train crash, a 'heroic deed', a tabloid hero, a tabloid villain, a sex attack, a pretentious restaurant opening... The book vilifies a media that feeds off these types of story. I haven't picked on particular journalists but created amalgams of several. The character of Jennifer Slater embodies the poisonous yet plausible stupidities of the tabloid press, which is having more and more influence in this country.'
Most of The Wrong Hands was written in a cottage in Hampshire but chapters were born as far a field as Luxor in Eygpt and Bryher in the Scilly Isles. Nigel was a travel journalist after all.
