Bookworm: “You mean, I should just cross out Harry Potter and put Sidney Chambers?”

VITAL TITLES

Last year, Edinburgh-based novelist and documentary-maker James Runcie was in a cafe with JK Rowling. He told her that he’d finished the first draft of his novel, The Clerical Detective, about a crime-solving clergyman in 1950s Cambridge, but that Bloomsbury were unhappy with the title.

“What’s he called again?” she asked.

“Sidney Chambers.”

“Well why don’t you call it ‘Sidney Chambers and … well, whatever?”

“Yes, I was thinking about that, about maybe getting a phrase from the Book of Common Prayer like ‘the shadow of death’.”

“Right then. Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death?”

“You mean, I should just cross out Harry Potter and put Sidney Chambers? Sidney Chambers and the Half-Blood Prince? Sidney Chambers and the Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Well, it worked for me, James,”JK Rowling replied.

TIPS FROM THE TOP

Runcie befriended Rowling over the year he spent filming his 2007 documentary about her. What did he learn about writing? “Plot, obviously. Also, how you have to absolutely dominate your material. She completely understands the mechanics of her fictional world and I’m trying to do the same.”

He more than succeeds. Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (out this week from Bloomsbury) is an undiluted pleasure.

DIARY DATES

Bookworm will be in Ullapool this weekend for the book festival, where one of the main attractions will be Canadian writer Alexander MacLeod, who will be talking about his award-winning collection of short stories, Light Lifting. Ullapool is a wonderful festival: if you get the chance, go.

If you can’t make it, MacLeod’s only other reading in Scotland will be at 7:30pm on Tuesday at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar in Edinburgh, at a free event hosted by the Edinburgh University Literary Society and chaired by James Robertson.

Finally, anyone who can’t make it to Ullapool today should head immediately to the Christian Aid sale at St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church on Edinburgh’s George Street. No better book sale in Britain (probably no bigger one either), and no better cause. It’s closed tomorrow but continues until Friday next week. Be there.