{"id":831,"date":"2022-06-17T11:30:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T01:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/?p=831"},"modified":"2026-07-29T11:31:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:31:00","slug":"burrowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/?p=831","title":{"rendered":"Burrowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been away from these pages too long. I have been hibernating\u2014squirrelling myself away from the world. Much occupied with bread-baking and recipe books, with the garden and the dogs\u2014Moji and Bo\u2014Labrador-kelpie rescues; with my partner, Sarah, and gorgeous children and grandchildren. So not entirely absent. But I\u2019ve neglected you, my small, faithful band of followers, readers, supporters. For which I apologise. With the explanation that I am a slow writer, who burrows into a subject only to come up for air when I have something to show for the burrowing. And I confess that I am rather pleased with what I have, after ten whale-obsessed years, come up with. Due out on 3 August with HarperCollins 4th Estate, my fifth and latest novel, Mr Carver\u2019s Whale<\/em>, is very close to my heart. I remember\u00a0when my former partner, the late poet Dorothy Porter, was at something of a loss as to what to write\u00a0after her groundbreaking novel-in-verse\u00a0Akhenaten<\/em>, my \"\"<\/a>advice was to write of what she loved best. The Monkey\u2019s Mask<\/em>, a brilliant fusion of poetry and detective fiction, was the happy result. In Mr Carver\u2019s Whale<\/em>,\u00a0I have followed my own advice. It is full to the brim with all my favourite things: exotic locales, whales, passionate love affairs, mysterious crimes and misdemeanours, and food. Ah, food. I have written an adventure novel, a book of the sea. An enticing conflation, or so I privately like to think, of Hornblower and Jane Austen.\u00a0\u00a0And I look forward to sharing with you over the coming weeks the journey that led me to this happy union. And am very glad to be back.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve been away from these pages too long. I have been hibernating\u2014squirrelling myself away from the world. Much occupied with bread-baking and recipe books, with the garden and the dogs\u2014Moji and Bo\u2014Labrador-kelpie rescues; with my partner, Sarah, and gorgeous children and grandchildren. So not entirely absent. But I\u2019ve neglected you, my small, faithful band of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832,"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}