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Next Tuesday I have been asked to give a short talk about my book Swindon Orbital at the Postmodern Gallery in Swindon. As we are in the midst of an election, here’s how I have decided to pitch it:

Although Swindon has grown a hundredfold in the past 200 years immigration remains a hot topic, particularly at election time.

Drawing on research conducted for his book Swindon Orbital, author Richard Willis will use Swindon’s history of migrations to argue that immigration is a force for good. If you are interested in politics, history and/or literature you should enjoy the discussion.

The talk is free. Here’s the flyer for the event. If you are in Swindon on Tuesday 4th May please do come along.

Whilst writing my first book Swindon Orbital earlier this year, I learnt something important about the act of writing. It was a crucial lesson, but not one I can share with you right now, because it went on to form the key idea around which my second book Blakes Road is being built, and to share it would be to spoil that.

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on the morning of monday 12th october 2009 i was invited down to the bbc’s brighton studios to take part in a live radio interview with bbc radio wiltshire’s mark o’donnell about about the book ‘swindon orbital‘. afterwards the whole show was released on the bbc’s iplayer and i ripped out the 10 minute section containing the interview for myself.

if you would like to hear it, you can find it here.

i’ve been in swindon promoting my book ‘swindon orbital‘ that i accidentally wrote earlier this year and published in traditional form just a few weeks ago. i have only a short time online now, so i’m going to be super-brief and write more later. i’ve had an astonishing time in swindon, achieving more than i thought possible, and i will share this with you at the first opportunity.

for now let me just just link to the pdf of the newspaper article that jaine blackman - features editor of swindon’s local newspaper the evening advertiser - wrote and published in last friday’s edition. it was greater and more positive coverage than i ever hoped for and i was and am truly flattered, thank you jaine.

i’ve finally finished my essay ’swindon orbital’, which has taken 4 months to complete. for me it’s a major piece of work and  i’m happy with it, with some reservations (which i think is healthy). i’ll keep this short post because the essay itself is what’s worth reading. if you’ve not heard about it before and would like to know more, start off here.

once completed, friend and fellow writer james burt suggested it should be published in actual book and promoted in swindon, so i did. details of its promotion - including a bbc radio interview and a newspaper article - can be found here. if you’d like to purchase a printed version of the book contact me directly here (copies cost £5), and if you’d just like to download the pdf, you can find it here.

if you do read it, please come back here and add your feedback. i’d like to know what you think.

for the last two months i have been working on my essay documenting the walk i took around swindon at christmas. it’s taken a very long time to complete, two months in all, but early last week i handed it over to james burt, a friend and fellow writer, for editing and proofing. james says he expects to have it back with me in a couple of days time, at which point i plan to integrate his suggestions, tidy it all up and publish it, as a pdf.

after which… i’m not sure yet. it turned into a much larger project than i expected it to - nearly the length of an undergraduate dissertation - so i feel as though i should do more with it than just stick on the website, although i’m not entirely sure what yet.

suggestions welcome!

this is the shape of 27th of december 2008:

this shape demarks the route of a walk i took on that day. inspired by and loosely modeled on iain sinclair’s ‘london orbital‘ - where iain circumnavigates london by following the route of the m25 - i decided to go for a similar walk around my home town of swindon. i bought a map of the town, roughly worked out the geographical centre, drew a circle with a compass around it and then went out to follow it by foot as closely as possible. with the shape of roads and the physical locations of buildings and farmland it was never going to be possible to walk a perfect circle and the route above shows the path i eventually took. the red line at the bottom of the shape marks the walk’s start and end point; the junction of springfield road & croft road and formerly the site of swindon’s old workhouse.

the idea - beyond simply having a post-christmas day out - was to see my own home town in a new way and reflect upon it afterwards in the form of something like a blog post. however, the experience was so rich with significance that it has forcably extended itself into a larger project; i will return to swindon in mid-january to spend a few days in the newly-built reference library putting together an illustrated historical essay.

update:
the essay is now finished. once completed, friend and fellow writer james burt suggested it should be published in actual book and promoted in swindon, so i did. details of its promotion - including a bbc radio interview and a newspaper article - can be found here. if you’d like to purchase a printed version of the book contact me directly here (copies cost £5), and if you’d just like to download the pdf, you can find it here.