Badge Books Blog

Happy Portico and the Chamber of Secrets

What happened when five teen-fiction writers formed a Question Time panel for a local school at Manchester's Portico Library?

OK, tell me you've never heard of the Portico Library. It's a private library in Manchester and it celebrates its bicentenary this year.

You're admitted after pressing a buzzer, as if by magic. A spectacular dome covers the main room, and all round the walls are ranged literally thousands of ancient books, called things like "Polite Literature" and "Voyages and Travels". Their number, their history and their combined intellectual weight are enough to make any writer feel both humble and elated. This is the sort of place that many think of when the word "library" is uttered: a quiet place full of leather-bound volumes with not a computer in sight, and no racks of DVDs or videos anywhere.

This gig, a kind of Question Time with a panel of local writers, was the brainchild of Livi Michael. She's the Portico Library's writer-in-residence. Her latest book, The Angel Stone, is partly about John Dee, who was, as well as a famous black magician and the model for Shakespeare's Prospero, a master at Manchester Grammar School. Isn't it extraordinary how many thrilling people have turned their hand to teaching at one time or another?

I digress ... but I like these kinds of connections. So there's Livi, sitting at lunch with me back in the spring, and suggesting we have such a session in the Portico with some boys from Manchester Grammar School. Since that lunch, Livi has been putting it all together: inviting the boys, inviting Borders to supply books, finding a date when all five of us were free, and liaising with the Portico. She even arranged for Channel M, a local television station, to come along and film. The line-up was Livi herself, Paul Magrs (Exchange), Sherry Ashworth (Close Up), Melvin Burgess and me.

So there we were, under that glorious dome - lined up in front of about 60 of the nicest, politest, most-interested 12 and 13 year-old boys you could wish to meet. Edmund Prestwich, a poet and a master at the school, did the hard graft before the event, introducing everyone to our work. He also chaired the session, and referred to his charges always as "Gentlemen". "Now, gentlemen," he would say, "we're going to have one last question." And gentlemen they were.

The questions were brilliant and managed to cover an awful lot of ground in a very short time. We found out about people's childhood reading, what age they were when they moved on to adult books. Sherry loved Dennis Wheatley, Livi read Austen at eleven, and Paul read all the Dr Who novelisations over and over.

They wanted to know our favourites from among our own books and Sherry said, quite rightly, that it's like choosing which of your children you love best. I added that it's the one you're writing now, because that's the book which still has all its possibilities before it.

Drinks and biscuits were served during the interval, the boys bought lots of books and we signed them. Then Melvin read from Sara's Face, his chilling novel about celebrity, beauty and surgery, I read a piece from Ithaka and then it was time for our questions.

Someone wanted to know what the inspiration was for Melvin's The Baby And Fly Pie, and he told the boys about the Death Squads in Bolivia who used to shoot kids as though they were vermin, to stop them stealing from shops. You could almost feel the communal indrawn breath.

I was asked about why I wrote Troy, and explained my view that women had been somewhat overlooked by Homer and that I'd felt the balance had to be redressed.

After the boys disappeared down the twisty staircase and back to school, we retired to the back room, also dark with books (History and Reference) for lunch cooked by Muriel, who is one of the Portico's greatest assets. I'm sure her pies are as much of an attraction as the books. If you're up in Manchester for any reason, go to the corner of Charlotte Street and Moseley Street, and press that buzzer. You won't be disappointed, I promise.

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