Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Sand-Reckoner’s Diagram

For Patty and others, who’d like to follow the action more closely…

This diagram, which figures so prominently in The Bellini Card, is an eight-pointed star inside a square. The above illustration comes from a Japanese website and it is, as far as  know, the only illustration of the Sand-Reckoner’s diagram online.

The idea that it was used as a fencing diagram, governing positions and strokes, was put to me in Hampshire some years ago. It has been on my mind ever since, not least because of its delightful name:  I was glad to unpack it for The BelliniCard.

Judging a Book by its Cover III

Here’s the new Faber paperback cover, as promised. I think it’s great – and so, I’m glad to say, do the Waterstone’s bookshop people.

Over the past few weeks some really amazing artwork has come in – covers for The Snake Stone done by my publishers in Korea and Denmark and Russia. Also the Icelandic version of The Janissary Tree. I’ll have to get my eldest son to post them here, along with the other 38 or so covers around the world; but that’s already two books, so at least 76 covers. All of them individual, striking, different. Which goes to show that everyone’s vision is unique. And that, in turn, suggests that we are the product of our histories. Vive la difference!