A Message to the Children

by Jim Williams

Those who come after us will want to know we really lived and loved as intensely as they do. Tell them.
WHO ARE YOU? WHY DO YOU ACT THE WAY THAT YOU DO? These questions capture the essential things we want to know about ourselves and explain to others. Yet so often we fail to do so. Instead many of us spend a great deal of effort researching the history of our ancestors to discover no more than the fact that they were workmen, servants and grocers of whom we can learn next to nothing. If only they had written the story of their lives! A Message to the Children is a book with a difference: an account of the author's life, a memoir to his children, a love letter to his wife, and a guide to how you, too, can write about your own life. Written in an easy and amusing style, it explains for the benefit of the non-writer such subjects as how to break the task down into manageable sections; how to exploit photographs and scrapbooks for materials; and what themes to write about. Then it applies those lessons in a way that will both touch and entertain you. Jim Williams is a Booker-nominated author of thirteen novels and two works of non-fiction.

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2007

About the author

Jim Williams first hit the news when his early novels had the uncanny knack of coming true. The Hitler Diaries was published nine months before the celebrated forgery came out in 1983. Farewell to Russia dealt with a nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union months before the Chernobyl disaster. Lara's Child, his sequel to Doctor Zhivago, provoked an international literary scandal and led to his being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Festival. Scherzo, a witty and elegant mystery set in eighteenth century Venice, was nominated for the Booker Prize. All of his fiction has been published internationally. Tango in Madeira is his eleventh novel.

From the author:

I was born in Oldham, England, the son of a coal miner and a cotton mill worker and grew up in circumstances that would today be considered poor. However I had loving parents and benefitted from a good education.

I have a degree in law and sociology and speak French, German and Spanish and have a smattering of other languages. Since 1970 I've been a qualified barrister, though I no longer practice. I am a Fellow of the Indian Society of Arbitrators, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the founder and a fellow of the Institute of Applied Charlatanry. One of these qualifications is entirely worthless and I leave you to guess which.

The most important fact in my life is that I have had a long and loving marriage to a wonderful wife, and my grown-up family still gather with us most Sundays for a family dinner.

I seem to have a happy, easy-going nature and I take a great deal of pleasure in ordinary things such as walking or gardening. My wife and I enjoy theatre, ballet, opera, paintings and dancing at every possible opportunity.