Brough Scott is a fine journalist and Galloper Jack, his brilliant book about his grandfather, Jack Seely, is published by Macmillan – www.panmacmillan.com.
Catch up with the rest of Brough’s fascinating output on www.broughscott.com
Another friend, Jon Henderson, has written a fine, myth-busting book When Footballers Were Skint, an eye-opening account of what footballers’ lives were like until relatively recently. www.bitebackpublishing.com
The River Thames and the more obscure parts of London crop up regularly in my books. The interest runs in the family for my brother, Roger Tagholm, is the author of Walking Literary London and Walking London’s Parks and Gardens, both published by New Holland – www.newhollandpublishers.com
The arena of unwitting behaviour, one of the themes in Parallel Lives, is brilliantly captured in psychoanalyst Adam Phillip’s book Side Effects, published by Hamish Hamilton – www.penguin.com
Julia Hobsbawm is queen of all things PR. Her next book, The Simplicity Principle will be published by Kogan Page in April 2020.
I have found myself speaking a lot in the West Country, partly because my son Hugo, his wife Sarah and their son Darwin, live in Truro. Hugo runs Surfers Against Sewage, a marvellous organisation which does so much to protect the quality of our beaches and seas – www.sas.org.uk.
The writing of Parallel Lives was informed enormously by Jean Harrison, who was a member of the Haringey Phoenix Group – www.haringeyphoenix.org.uk – a charity working with the blind and partially sighted in North London. Jean sadly died recently.
Peter Denton, friend, writer and photographer has taken some pictures of me over the years. They can be found amongst his fine collection on www.flickr.com/photos/peterdenton/.
www.thames21.org.uk. Volunteering with Thames21 helped foster A Girl Called Flotsam. The charity does invaluable work in keeping the Thames and its tributaries free of rubbish.