A Writer's Story

A Writer's Story

A Writer’s Story is a collection of memories, told with wit and understanding, which offers insight into the art and nature of writing.

The author of more than thirty novels, published over fifty years, Rachel Billington is a natural storyteller. Now shifting the focus from her imagined characters to those who have been so vibrant and vital in her own life, Billington casts herself as protagonist in this honest and entertaining memoir.

‘Fiction is a form of disguise, certainly. But, more important, it is a way of telling your own stories through other peoples’ lives’.

Other Writing

How Emma persuaded me to write ‘Perfect Happiness’
Impossible to believe that Miss Emma Woodhouse could change anyone’s mood for the better. Conceited, narrow-minded, snobbish, insensitive are just... Read more
Covid 19 – Buster’s Story
It all started well. Jim was suddenly at home more. Actually, all day. The morning walk was a little longer... Read more
Politics
‘Oh politics!’ exclaimed Dan as if that was the end of the matter. ‘But I was stopped in the street.... Read more
The Wild Cherry Tree (Prunus avium)
The Wild Cherry Tree is a hermaphrodite, both male and female, and more than a little poisonous. But this didn’t... Read more

Thoughts

A Writer's Story

A little girl crawls through coils of barbed wire decorated with a skull and crossbones. ‘A sign shouts ‘Unexploded bombs!’ A thirteen year old boy climbs into the back of an abandoned car in a field and prepares for the long night. A hugely pregnant young Englishwoman lies on a couch with a view of the Mediterranean. She is dictating a script to a famous film star who leaps round the furniture. A young soldier boards ship, part of a defeated army, and as he waves farewell, screaming out the names of the dead to the jagged coast, a shell blows away his arm. A woman, no longer young, looks beyond bars to the sky, while a choir of prisoners sing ‘I believe…’
Fact and Fiction. Fiction and Fact.
A distinguished peers’s trousers fall down during a royal ceremony in Windsor Castle.
I could go on. But now I’m publishing ‘A Writer’s Story.’