Words of wisdom: letters from famous authors

A glimpse into my archive of personal fan letters

Anne Tyler is one of my favourite novelists… the letter she wrote to me is one of my prized possessions

Don’t be scared to reach out to the greats

I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was very little. And from an equally young age I’ve met famous authors, encounters that forged my desire to become an author myself.

At school we had regular visits by poets and children’s authors. Many were known only locally; some had higher profiles. I remember Leon Garfield, the renowned author of gripping Dickensian-style children’s books coming to our high school. He was an entertaining speaker and I remember thinking: this is what I want to do.

I also got into the habit of occasionally writing to writers who had had an impact on me. When I was in the sixth-form at school in the Lake District in the north of England I wrote to poet Norman Nicholson, a very well-known English poet who lived not far from me (I was in Kendal; he Millom). He had been part of the generation of poets who came after T. S. Eliot and included Dylan Thomas.

I remember a tatty recycled A4 envelope arriving through my letterbox. I knew it was from Nicholson because the envelope had his name and address etched out on one side and my own scrawled in spidery handwriting on the other. Inside was a really badly typed letter full of wonderful advice about becoming a poet and a handwritten manuscript of one of his most famous poems, Scafell Pike. I was walking on air for days after receiving that letter. Sadly, Nicholson died a few weeks after he wrote to me.

I recently donated the letter and the poem manuscript to the John Rylands Library in Manchester, which has Nicholson’s collected papers.

In the years that followed I sent admiring letters to playwrights Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard (Pinter declined to reply, instead asking his agent to explain he was too busy; Stoppard did reply, but forgot to sign his letter, which is a shame).

When I was writing a newspaper feature about the late thriller writer Desmond Bagley, I contacted a slew of famous bestselling authors: Jack Higgins, Dick Francis, Hammond Innes and Duncan Kyle.

Jack Higgins telephoned me rather than writing back (that was a fun conversation), while I received lovely letters from Francis, Innes and Kyle.

I have two or three letters from legendary playwright Alan Ayckbourn, one of my writing heroes. They were written to me in his capacity as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, on the North Yorkshire coast in England. They were very polite, very encouraging letters of rejection after I sent him a couple of my (not very good) attempts at plays.

In more recent times, I received a lovely handwritten card in reply to a fan letter from one of my favourite novelists, Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons. I was a bit star-struck to receive that one.

Write to your heroes

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you should contact your writing heroes. You may not get anything back, but chances are you will. Authors, in my experience, are generous folk and want to give the next generation a helping hand.

I’m going to share with you the lovely letters I’ve had over the next few newsletters (I’ll need to get them out of the loft!).

But today, I’ll start with perhaps my favourite: Anne Tyler’s note.