At the beginning of Tunesmith, tinsmith, we learn of the death of the narrator's father, a man he hardly knew. Their brief meeting transforms Jacques' life both practically and internally, teaching him to see things with fresh eyes.

'There have been periods in my life when my eyes were relatively closed to the very thing I loved most of all: the miracle of life. When I returned to Lourdes alone in 1976, my eyes were suddenly and dramatically opened, with unknown orchids, birds of prey, a large snake which I always heard but never saw, the possibility of coming across a bear in the mountains.

'The love which I have for all of these miracles of life provides the heart and soul of the novels and makes the writing so easy because I can call on over sixty years of knowledge and first-hand experience, dating back to going fishing with my father and seeing kestrels hunting over the fields opposite our house, finding wild mushrooms in the autumn grass and eating blackberries straight from the brambles.

'But things haven't always been this idyllic and there have been years in which I hardly saw anything. I was walking and driving with my eyes shut, wrapped up in other thoughts and practical concerns.

'Having this first-hand experience of huge contrasts in my own life made it easy for me to imagine what Jacques has gone through.  It makes him very real indeed, but in fact most his life is very far removed from what my own has been. I am neither an orphan nor a once-famous violinist, for starters!'

'Tourism and holidays on the beach are not my ticket.  I love to live somewhere, to get involved by working there and putting down roots with friends, even if I only see them for a few weeks once every half-century.

'Work and friendships led me to learning four languages, which helps.  From that I found that I could read a large book written in a fifth, Catalan. In France in 1980 I was already interpreting between French and German people, or English and Spanish, albeit in a very limited way, and this gave me an unusual perspective on Britain.

'In the city I learned how to laugh at my own folly.  In the books, this gives me the freedom to make jokes at Jacques' expense, to provide comedy which relieves and heightens the tragedy in proper Shakespearian manner, with no need to hurt friends who might recognise themselves in other characters.'

'Researching Feeding the vultures took me back to places which I knew extremely well in the seventies, and I even planned to start the same job all over again, in the same place, forty eight years to the day.  In fact the coach from London was delayed and we arrived in Lourdes at four in the morning, so I had to start work on 2nd April instead.  

'From then on, much that happened was fresh and new, so any autobiographical flavour soon vanished in a wealth of new 'Jacques' experiences.  Getting into rôle and seeing things through forty-something eyes was fascinating, and soon I was racing up mountainsides almost as Jacques might have done.

'I draw heavily on personal experiences so that the books are true.  But most of my own life has been very far from what is in this trilogy, and there is no need for them to be an autobiography.  Anyway, the best bits of my life are happening right now!'

'A good story needs a special energy to drive the plot.  I don't find any need to fake excitement or drama: real life is the mother of invention.

'For the Tunesmith books, I have hardly had to invent anything beyond the plot itself.  The people and places which are so dear to my heart can all have a new life in these pages, for future generations to enjoy and hopefully to open up young minds to the wonders which await discovery close to home, with no need to fly to the other side of the globe.

'Seeing the world through Jacques' rather innocent, idealistic eyes makes me feel young, and people who read the books find them a breath of fresh air.'

The terrible tragedies in Tunesmith and Pilgrim help us to see how precious and miraculous life is.  Again and again, at many bends in their pathways, sometimes by revealing the tiniest naturalistic details, the books are extremely uplifting.

'When I first started to edit Tunesmith, I was astonished by how alive the book is.  I had imagined that editing these books would be a chore, but in fact it is a delight.

'Tunesmith has a magical energy of its own, and reading the finished book fresh from the printers felt like reading something written by a favourite author...like reading John Steinbeck, Thomas Hardy and Laurie Lee in my teens.

'Recently I realised that Gerald Durrell and other natural historians were also unconscious influences...the similarities with Durrell are obvious now, especially in the sense of humour conveyed in little details.

'After weeks of camping in wild places in the Spanish Pyrenees I once spent a night in a smart hotel right by the shore of a beautiful bay where a world-famous artist had lived until a few years earlier. Walking barefoot into the bathroom, there on the polished tiles I found a nice shiny black scorpion. His tail waved a greeting to my foot. It is hard not to have a sense of humour in situations like that!'

'The next morning before breakfast I took some close-up pictures of him and then showed him to some German children who were ready to move into the room.  We agreed to let him go in the bushes...all the time I was thinking of Gerry with his matchbox full of scorpions on the dinner-table in My Family and Other Animals.

'As an artist creating something new, it is natural to unconsciously, unintentionally tap into the flow of ideas and emotions which other artists have experienced before us...the ebb and flow of life on this planet.'

'Years ago, writing technical columns for photographic magazines, I found a real sense of purpose in the work, and the value of careful research so that each finished article would be genuinely useful to lots of other people, rather than mere padding or decoration.

'Now in writing the novels, my job seems to be to act as some kind of channel, using skills which have taken over fifty years to mature like a vintage wine, so that my words and pages allow the reader to enjoy the stories, the characters and the details as if they are seeing everything through their own eyes.

'When someone writes to tell me that something in Tunesmith or Pilgrim reminded them of somewhere they used to know well, I know that the work has succeeded.

'That is precisely what I worked so hard to achieve in twenty years of professional photography and in decades of making music...the art which conceals art, hopefully revealing the truest picture.'