Featured Interview With Anson Welsh
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in a South Wales mining valley. At the age of ten, after reading a book about the fictional aviation hero, Biggles, I decided I was going to be a pilot, and never once changed my mind.
I started flying at the age of nineteen and went on to have a modest but very enjoyable career. Among other things I spent two years working in Africa for a flying doctor service, and eight years in the Malaysian state of Sarawak flying for the oil industry. However, the bulk of my time was as a short-haul airline pilot operating turbo-prop and jet aircraft around the UK and Europe. I retired from commercial aviation when I hit the buffers at sixty-five, but I still continue flying, both as a part-time flying club instructor, and as a private pilot, flying an Aeronca Chief that I part own.
I live in a little market town on the fringes of Dartmoor, England. When not flying or writing I like to spend my time walking on the moor or along the coast of Cornwall. My other interests include reading, theatre, cinema, BBC radio4, photography and looking after my grandchildren.
I don’t have any pets because my wife and I go away quite a bit and intend to go away even more in future. We particularly like walking holidays and have hiked at various European locations, as well as in India, Ethiopia ( accompanied by a donkey ) and the United States.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My mother taught me to read before I went to Primary School and I never looked back. I am one of those people who is rarely without a book somewhere at hand, and on those occasions when I have time to kill without anything to read, I will look at whatever is on the wall, or on the back of a sauce bottle or a packet of cornflakes.
I have always scribbled down random ideas, and over the years I had a number of articles published in aviation magazines. However, I did not start really getting down to trying to produce a novel until I was in my late fifties. My job was requiring me to spend a lot of time in hotels, and in the hours before or after a flying duty I finally got on with writing ‘Marshall’s Family.’
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Graham Greene, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Ernest K. Gann, Cormac McCarthy are but a few.
I wouldn’t say I have a favourite genre. I like what I like. For example this year so far I have read: a story about the American civil war, ‘Enemy Women,’ by Paulette Jiles, ‘Sapens,’ by Yuval Harari, charting the development of the human race, ‘Arab Jazz,’ by Karim Miske, a thriller set in Paris, ‘Luck and a Lancaster,’ by Harry Yates, a wartime memoir. So you can see the range of my reading tends to be pretty far and wide.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Marshall’s Family, is about a pilot, who works for an international mining company, based in an unidentified African country. His marriage is slowly falling apart, and when his daughter comes home from boarding school with a boyfriend Marshall’s wife, Fiona, considers unsuitable, the stresses get even worse. Meanwhile, his lover, Donna, is quietly putting pressure on him to leave with her.
A military coup abruptly changes everything. Marshall finds himself involved in helping refugees from the new government’s wrath, under the very nose of Major Kinga, the head of the country’s security service.
As events spiral out of control Marshall comes into possession of information that makes him a target for torture and death. He must get away fast, but can he also save all the people for whom he has assumed responsibility, before Kinga finds them?
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