Carolyn, your book Knifing the Famous seems to be predominately about your father's possible involvement in the disappearance of Lord Lucan. Although there is much more to him than this account, was it your primary motivation for writing it?
"No, it wasn't! He passed away quite suddenly, having just gone shopping and bought himself a new TV. I was in the habit of emailing at least twice a week and phoning too. So when I got that dreaded phone call, I sat in my office with a huge heap of emails around me - all interesting and all uplifting if you know what I mean. Because I couldn't afford the trip I decided to try and record his life in a personal way - after all, I already had his own account of his time as a Medical Officer in the East and in what they call the Forgotten War - in Burma. So I typed all that up and added in extra stories which were sent in other emails. Then I sat back - the 'book' at this point was about 100 pages - and started to make a sort of chronological account of his life. Perusing through his papers I came across a manila file marked Lord Lucan, and to my surprise I found a medical record of Lord Lucan's surgery and this is where I added the chapter on Lucan. I thought I had better get myself informed so I looked at some of the material on the web - then I read about the man in New Zealand (Roger Woodgate) that a couple called Harris thought was Lord Lucan and I telephoned them and had chats with Mrs Harris about this man and found she was pretty scared. Eventually Woodgate took them to court for defamation and the police stated that Roger Woodgate was not Lord Lucan. So I began my chapter on Lord Lucan!"
The rest of the interview appears on the main Struggling Authors site > here
