[photo: Neil Kendal]
Appearing:
Sunderland (7th Nov)
Paul Bajoria is a radio producer with the BBC and works on many of Radio 4’s most popular quiz programmes. He has produced Round Britain Quiz since 1997 and Counterpoint since 2001. He co-created Master Team, the successor to Mastermind, with Peter Snow. For all these shows, Paul writes a high proportion of the questions himself. His radio career has touched every part of his life – he met his partner Jacqui at BBC Radio Newcastle in 1989, when she was a producer and he was a “wet-behind-the-ears�? programme assistant. Paul, Jacqui and their children - Verity and Dominic – live in Northumberland.
Paul studied English at both Oxford and Toronto University. Whilst in Canada, he began to develop the story that was to become The Printer’s Devil. Revisiting the fiction he’d read as a child – books by the likes of Leon Garfield and Joan Aiken – made him want to recapture the sense he’d had, aged nine or ten, that books held a sense of “life-changing mystery�?. He did a fair amount of background reading, researching the history of the East India Company and reading novels including Hawksmoor. Paul wanted the book to be historically credible without compromising the story. For example, in The Printer’s Devil, the coachman is missing his middle two teeth; his research had revealed that it was common for coachmen to remove their two front teeth so they could hold the whip in their mouth. Back in London, Paul walked the streets around Clerkenwell to soak up its very particular atmosphere. When Paul first submitted his work to publishers, he was told there was a lack of interest in historical fiction for kids. As a result, The Printer’s Devil was put away in a drawer for several years. It was talking to his nine year-old niece, about what kids wanted to read, which spurred Paul to have another go.
The God of Mischief, the sequel to The Printer’s Devil was published by Simon and Schuster in September 2005 in hardback and then in paperback in July 2006. Mog and Nick’s adventures continue when they find themselves bundled off to a gothic mansion, but it soon becomes clear that a malevolent manservant is not planning to let them get too settled in…
Paul was born in 1964 in the North East of England. His mum, Muriel, was a nurse from Humberside. Paul’s dad, Shyam, hails from Gwalior, near Bhopal. He came over to the UK to earn his surgeon’s qualification and worked as a locum in the hospital where Muriel worked. Their multicultural marriage in the early 1960s had an impact on both families. When Paul was 18 months old, the family finally travelled to India. It was the first time his dad’s parents had met their daughter-in-law and grandson. Paul describes India as “an exotic shadow presence�? in The Printer’s Devil, and equally in his own life. Getting to know India is an unfolding theme for Paul, one which will be more developed in his next novel, the sequel to The Printer’s Devil and The God of Mischief.
Recommended Reads
Printer's Devil
Simon & Schuster
0689872860
God of Mischief
Simon and Schuster
1416901132
Publisher
Simon and Schuster