Ep. 2519 Wine and Crime at Venice Noir with David Hewson and Philip Gwynne Jones | Book Club with Richard Hough

We're not trying to be, an event that has thousands and thousands of visitors. We want to be compact. We want to be a kind of a boutique festival where people get to meet and mingle and leaders and authors get to chat, and there's a social side to it. And there's a community building over the years. So it's the start. It's the very first one. There'll be a few rough edges, but, you know, the basics are there. We've got the authors. We've got the venues, and I think we've got some great subjects to talk about. So I hope anybody who's listening, if you wanna come along, can't know. You're coming, Richard. So it'd be lovely to see you there. Yeah. There will be food and drink. Don't forget that. There will be food and drink as well. Yes. Yeah. There will be food and drink. Hello, and welcome to book club with the Italian wine podcast. I'm your host, Richard Hoff, and I'm delighted that you're joining us as we get between the vines with some of the best wine writing out there. So sit back, pour yourself a glass, and enjoy the show with the Italian Wine Podcast. This month, our guests are two renowned crime writers who have embraced Italy as the backdrop for their murder mystery thriller, David Hewson and Philip Gwyn Jones. Hi, chaps. Welcome to the Italian Wine Podcast. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Yep. Me too. Great. So this is something of a first for the show, because you're not wine writers, but you do have very deep links with Italy, not least its food and wine, which I know you both enjoy. Especially, Negroni's, I think in your case Oh, we'll get around to those, I'm sure. Yes. Okay. So I'm very much, looking forward to exploring some of that with you in our conversation. First though, I just want to understand a little bit more about your your backgrounds and your origins as crime writers. And starting with you, David, your journalistic career began as a 17 year old I did. At the Scarborough Evening News. Yeah. You then went on to work with the Times and the Independent. So can you tell us just a bit about your your life as a journalist, your work as a journalist? What kind of memorable stories did you cover? And how did that background prepare you for being a crime writer? Well, you know, I I went into journalism because I wanted to write, and I couldn't think of anything else to do. Mhmm. I always wanted to write books, but you didn't have an experience as a young person. So, you know, I was literally covering flower shows and and minor car crashes and court cases, when I was 17, and then somehow clawed my way onto the times and then the independent on the Sunday Times. And, you know, I I covered business. I covered foreign reporting. I was the asked correspondent for a while. And then on The Sunday Times, I was a technology columnist, for quite a while. So I did I did lots of different sorts of stuff. In terms of how journalism prepares you for being a writer, in one way, it's a great preparation because you learn that your words need to be edited. You know, you're not precious about what you've written. And, you know, I work with some great journalists over the years and some great editors who taught me stuff that I was able to pass on to other people. And that's really important when you're writing whether you're writing a book or a press release or what everything. You know, you're gonna take feedback. You've got to accept that people can improve your work. And I found that a lot of people who try to become authors later on are just so amazed that they've actually written something that they don't want to change a single word, which is a a real mistake. So that side of being a journalist is very good in that you you understand that editing and rewriting, they're both incredibly important. The bad side of it is that, you know, everything that makes journalism good makes fiction bad because as a journalist, you're trying to tell the absolute truth. And what you're trying to do as a as a novelist is tell a whopping great lie that appears to be the truth. So everything that makes fiction work would get you fired as a journalist. So, you know, I think you can get hooked up. I mean, some journalists who become writers become obsessed with fact and have to get everything absolutely right. And my approach is if something is meant to be factual in a book, and often I will use factual stuff, then I will endeavor to make it right, but I will still feel the freedom to lie big time whenever I feel like it. So it it swings and roundabouts, really. Okay. And when did you make the transition in from journalism to Well, I was I I I knew that I had to find the time to write because there was no way I was gonna write a book if I was commuting into London into an office. So I eventually managed to wangle my way on to be a columnist, a weekly columnist on the Sunday Times, which meant I could work from home. So I was writing the book in the morning and then working as for the Sunday Times in the afternoon and the evenings. And then, eventually, I was able to the the books took up enough, but I can just say terrified my wife. But I said, that's it. I'm giving up journalism for good, and that was over twenty years ago. And with hindsight, I think I should probably have given it up earlier, but I was you know, there were kids and bills to pay, so I didn't. But, but it was always something I I I wanted to do. And it was in, you know, I was in my early forties when it happened. I'd actually given up. I'd stopped thinking about being a writer, and then we had a holiday in Southern Spain, at Easter. And the weather was absolutely terrible, awful. And there was a book on the bookshelf, an Ed McBain, great Ed McBain crime story, 87 Precinct. And I read that, and I just thought I'd forgotten. That's this is what I want to do. And that prompted me into, trying to write a book. And and that's how it all started. Interesting. And how did your career then take shape in those early days of finding an editor, having a story? Well, it very nearly didn't. It very nearly didn't. I wrote, you know, my first book, which I call Samantha Center. I wrote it, and I followed all the things it tells you to do in the the writer's yearbook. You know, like, you write a letter to all the agents explaining who you are and what the book's like. They all came back and said we're not interested. We don't even want to read it. Who wants to read a book set in Spain? And I was spending a lot of time in America at the time, so I thought I'd get myself an agent in New York. I was about to go to New York, and I sent it I faxed because these these are the days of fax. There was no email. I actually faxed these things around to loads of agents. Most of everyone ignored it apart from one agent came back and said, you can't do this. You're English. You need an English agent. My mate in England might be interested. Now her mate in England was a wonderful woman called Vivienne Shuster, who was like the queen of literary agents at the time. She represented everybody. And, she worked for Curtis Brown. Curtis Brown had already said they didn't wanna read the book. But Viv phoned me, and she said, Edith, she'll talk about it. You know? Of course, I didn't say, actually, you've already said you don't want to read the book. But she did the thing saying, I'd like to read the first 10 pages, Then she said, I'd like to read the next 50 pages. Then she wanted to read it all, and then she took it on. And within a space of three months, I had a three book contract with Robert Collins. And six months later, I've got a film deal. And they made the they made a film of it. It's a truly terrible film, but they made a film of it. So, you know, that's that's publishing. You know? I think it's probably even more bizarre than that now. But, but back in those days, you know, it was just your luck and a prayer. And you, Philip, your background is completely different. It's very different to David. Yes. You were