Bryony's Blog

   My elderly friend and I are discussing the possibility of becoming gold dealers.  It seems everyone is at it these days.  I recently contacted someone who did some work on our driveway a couple of years ago and discovered he no longer does crazy paving; instead, he has become a gold dealer in Esigodeni. I imagine him meeting customers in the back room of some shabby establishment or drawing up next to them in the car park of some shebeen and handing over a bag of gold nuggets in exchange for large wads of money.  'You'd never do it,' says my friend.  'You'd be caught almost immediately.' I must say, I am a little offended.  I don't particularly want to be a gold dealer, but nor do I like being told I lack the ability to be one. However, I know what she means.  I'd be too nice.  Of course, that might just be my  modus operandi.   It would certainly provide a good cover and it save me the need to meet clients in dodgy hotels i...

Paula Hawkins is the best-selling author of The Girl On The Train  which has sold around 11 million copies globally and been made into a blockbuster film grossing around US$24.6 million.  Here I talk to her about her interest in the best-selling novelist of all time, Agatha Christie.     BR: In a number of interviews, you’ve mentioned that you read a lot of Agatha Christie as a teenager and that this influenced your desire to be a writer. What in particular did you like about her work? PH: Agatha Christie’s books were the first real mysteries I ever read; I remember being thrilled by her plotting, by the casts of dastardly characters, the glamorous locations, and by all those shocking twists. BR: Have you a favourite? PH: And Then There Were None. It’s perfectly constructed. BR: There are some people who consider Agatha Christie a little twee and old-fashioned now.   Not gory enough, I suppose! For me, one of the...

In a hot, airless little room in Bulawayo, an elderly man rummages through disintegrating brown envelopes and rusty files.   Faint labels carry captions such as: ‘Railway Staff 1932-33’ and ‘Wages March 1952’.   There are dusty black and white photographs on the wall of men in dark suits and hats.   Unsmiling, they all look alarmingly similar with their handle-bar moustaches and their arms crossed resolutely across their chests.                 ‘No.   I thought I might have something, but no.’ He reluctantly admits defeat, so convinced was he that he might be able to help me in my search. I am in the archives of the Railway Museum in Bulawayo.   The buildings themselves are run down and we are surrounded by the great hulks of rusting train carcasses. The museum, now a separate entity from the National Railways of Zimbabwe, is run by a couple of train enthusiasts, who are extremely kn...

Agatha and I go back a long way.  As a child, my grandmother was an avid reader of her novels and when I went to the library to change my gran's books for her, I was often asked to pick up an Agatha Christie or two.  So it was that I became familiar with many of her titles and the covers of the Fontana paperback editions of her books (there were the odd Crime Club editions as well).  We also went to watch film versions of Murder on the Orient Express, Evil Under the Sun and Endless Night.  I was absolutely scared stiff and remember having difficulty going to sleep afterwards!  We would watch television adaptations of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot as a family.  No one answered the phone and any visitors at the door were viewed with impatient disdain.  During the adverts, someone would rush out and make a cup of tea and then rush back, often asking frantically 'What did I miss?  Did I miss anything?' The first Christie I read ...

Stories about Africa do not have to be about starvation says Bryony Rheam by Our Correspondent, Western Mail Aug 11 2012 Add a comment Recommend (3) in Share 2 Share on email Share on print It’s a long way from Zimbabwe to Swansea, but good stories travel well. Which is why Welsh publisher Parthian published the winner of the Zimbabwean Best First Novel Award. Author, Bryony Rheam, basks in the background to This September Sun I’ve always believed I was born in the wrong age. I should have been born in the ’20s or ’30s and lived in a large house in the British countryside. There would have been a cook, at least two maids, a gardener and perhaps even a nanny thrown in for good measure. I’d go to boarding school and, in the holidays, I’d explore the nearby woods and find fairies and pixies and elves and we’d all have such splendid fun. Considering the reading matter I was exposed to as a child, this idea of myself is not surpri...