Worlds Apart

I'm currently helping with research on a book to be published days after the Royal Wedding.  It's a far cry from The A-Z of Punishment and Torture but creating a book, whatever the subject, involves the same journey from inception to publication during which your world expands with the new knowledge you glean along the way.  I have to confess I had only a sketchy grasp of Royal liveswhen I started, but now I feel almost 'involved' with them.  They have stepped from my computer screen, and the newspapers and magazines I have used for research, and gradually become flesh and blood people, who laugh, cry, hurt and endure, just like the rest of us.  I suppose that's the joy of book reading.  Within those pages are other lives, with all their complexities, or similarities to our own, which enrich us with their contribution.