Christophe​r Stone: Interviewed by Mark Antony Raines

What inspires you to write?

What inspires me to write? Everything inspires me to write. I’m interested in most things and have a compulsion to communicate that interest. That’s the essence of writing: being interested and then being able to communicate that interest in an accessible and open-hearted way. 

Currently I’m working with this guy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bolton, Steve Bolton, on his autobiography. The reason I’m interested in this is that it’s like my own story to some degree. It’s the story of post-war Britain. Steve was a rock and roll star. He’s been there, done that, got the tee-shirt, taken the drugs, lost the tee-shirt, and ended up in a field in Reculver playing guitar by an open fire. How interesting is that?

What are your plans for the future?

My plan for the future is simply to keep writing. I’m approaching my retirement now and don’t have any pension sorted out. What better an occupation for a retired person than writing? It doesn’t involve any physical work, just mental work. All you have to do is to sit on your arse and be interested in things and then interesting in the way you express them.As for what it’s like to be a writer, well it’s not a lot different from being a plumber I imagine. Both of them are skills. Both of them are trades. You can earn money from either and there is a certain amount of demand for both. The only difference is, really, that the writer can express his life through his work, while the plumber has to wait till he gets down the pub. http://christopherjamesstone.wordpress.com/

"Stone writes with intelligence, wit and sensitivity." Times Literary Supplement

Publications *The Guardian Weekend*The Observer*The Big Issue*The Independent*The Independent on Sunday*The New Statesman*The London Review of Books*Mixmag*The Sunday Herald*The Times Literary Supplement*Prediction*Kindred Spirit*The Whitstable Times*Saga Magazine*Kent Life*The Whitstable Gazette*

Books *The Trials of Arthur (with Arthur Pendragon: Big Hand Books 2010)*Housing Benefit Hill (AK Press 2001)*Last of the Hippies (Faber & Faber 1999)*Fierce Dancing (Faber & Faber 1996)*

"Wry, acute, and sometimes hellishly entertaining essays in squalor and rebellion." Herald

"The best guide to the Underground since Charon ferried dead souls across the Styx." Independent on Sunday

"Passionately serious, irresistibly compelling, and hilariously good-humoured." Professor Ronald Hutton, Bristol University

"Searching, funny, intelligent and illuminating." Deborah Orr, The Independent