Sue Leonard

Claudia Carroll is unlucky in love. She’s had a terrible time on dating sites – never, ever, meeting anyone she clicked with, and when, one day, she read a story of someone’s date from hell, it […]

As a child, Eoghan spent a lot of time outside, mucking about.             “We played a on bits of wasteland,” he says. Leaving school, Eoghan moved to London and learned various practical crafts like welding. And […]

As a child, Shane loved sport, and drama. “I was always putting on plays for my friends and family.” After college, he worked for Bord na Móna. “I was on the graduate programme working in New […]

These Days. Lucy Caldwell. Faber: €1820. Kindle: €9.24. It’s Spring 1941 in Belfast, and the inhabitants are starting to hope that they’ve escaped the worst of the war. But in the four nights that comprise the […]

Brought up in the world of horseracing, Sara has been a lifelong show-jumper.   “My father was a jump-jockey, and then a head lad,” she says. “I loved pony books – and at ten I wrote […]

As a child Bronagh wanted to be a poet. Then, after BBC’s watching BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, she wanted to adapt classics for film and TV. After college she landed a job writing features for the […]

I’m often asked to talk to the press about the art of ghostwriting, but this article, prompted by Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, is the most comprehensive I’ve contributed to. Journalist Patrice Harrington, writing in The Sunday […]

As a child, reading a book a day, Florence was terrified that she would run out of books. “It was such a relief when I first went to the library,” she says, “and realised that I […]

Fiacre has autism and is non-verbal, but he loved having stories read to him as a child. Favourites included Horrid Henry, Harry Potter, and history books.             “My mother, who is a teacher, read me a […]

Ally Bunbury’s earliest memory is of driving round the drawing room on a little cart, smoking a candy cigarette.                 “I was pretending to be Alexis Carrington,” she says, talking of Joan Collins’s character in the […]

When Judith Mok was fifteen, she became a student at the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague. A gifted singer, she was thrilled to receive a Masterclass from Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, the diva whose voice had filled her […]

Alex was brought up on a diet of fairy tales.             “From the minute I was born, Mum read to me. I learned the books by heart.” As a child she rewrote tales by Enid Blyton […]