An Interview with David Brewerton

am a Londoner from an ordinary East End family. Although I went to a grammar school my formal education ceased when I was sixteen. I went to work as messenger boy in the City and then by chance got a job with a news agency, working on their financial newswire. The only qualifications they required were 'O' levels in Maths and English. From there I was recruited to the Financial Times and went on to work for many years on the Daily Telegraph, followed by The Independent and the Times.

I left work through illness at the age of 59 and started writing soon after.

Anywhere. Having been used to working in noisy newsrooms, I can write anywhere. Most of my writing is done at a desk in my sitting room. . 

I like telling stories. 

The easiest is the writing. The hardest is finding the right things to write about.

Enormously. They also have a disproportionate effect on my confidence, either for better or worse.  

I would like to write like Graham Swift, or Jon McGregor or Philip Roth. In my wildest ambitions I think of Hemingway or Paul Auster.

I suppose the big shift is moving from the "What's the story" approach of journalism into the "What's the story really about?" of creative writing. Journalism and writing are actually poles apart. In journalism everything is pared down to the bone, every word has a job to do. In writing, it is much more important to set the scene, to allow the reader to draw his own mind map of events. Writing obituaries, in a way, bridges the divide because the obituarist tries to explain the life of his subject..  

I write books on my own. But I loved working with my colleagues in newspapers.

No!  

It is the greatest thrill you can get as a journalist. The excitement of finding a new twist which you believe no other news reporter has found almost beyond description, but it is always tinged with the anxiety that somebody else may also be writing the same story, or will have found an angle that you have missed.  

I got into writing obituaries when I was asked by a fellow journalist if I would do so. The tricks with "obits" is to find somebody who knows the subject well, and to encourage them to talk. People can be surprisingly generous in talking about their friends. Much of the basic research is done from press cuttings.  

I'm not sure. I suppose I am used to listening, and perhaps have an eye for a good story. 

Yes they have, enormously. Although Impeccable Sources is in no way autobiographical and all the characters are entirely fictional, I have drawn heavily on my experience of thirty years in newspapers, particularly in representing the attitudes and priorities of senior newspaper executives. 

Most of the usual London things - wandering about, the cinema, seeing people. And family things - I am a member of a big family. I don't climb mountains or play golf or anything like that. 

Write because you want to. Write what you want, but don't hurt anybody.

Thank you.