Going through my photo albums lately with a view to putting up some research pictures for each novel it occurred to me how sad it is that with all one’s pics now on line, from phones and cameras and friends, that enjoyable feeling of flipping over the pages of an album will soon be something else which has disappeared into a quaint and superseded past. Just looking at those old albums reminds one of the day the snaps  were excitedly extricated from the wallet in which they were delivered, and takes one back to the moment they were taken! That doesn’t seem to happen when looking at an electronic file full of pics where there might be hundreds, several of each subject with almost no difference between them save the blink of an eye, and perhaps only one in a hundred will ever be printed up in order to give it to someone else.

Having said that, rather ironically we have recently been spending a lot of time putting some lovely old black and white family photos on line to preserve them from fading away entirely.  But sadly so many of them are without names or places and we have been reduced to looking for family likenesses and clues. Yes, there is another novel in there, but maybe not for a couple of years...

This swiftly changing technology appears – or rather, doesn’t appear – in some of my earlier books. In Lady of Hay , for instance, where no one mentions computers, never mind mobile phones, although they have of course  made an appearance  as part of everyday life in the sequel at the end of the new edition!  And Whispers in the Sand, some of the related photos of which I have just put up in the novel section, betrays the technological shift when one of the characters starts talking about film in a camera! Shock, horror!  I don’t miss film in cameras, though.  Life is so much easier without it and being able to whip out one’s phone and click away at a moment’s notice is a joy – and one that can be as easily deleted. Never again will I go on a research trip and realise I have forgotten the camera or run out of film or done something unforgivable like facing into the sun.  Although having said that, I seemed to be able to film the sunrise in the desert without any problem. I was rather impressed by that. Click on Whispers to see...