Elizabeth Speller is a poet and author of four non-fiction books including a biography of Emperor Hadrian, companion guides to Rome and to Athens, and a memoir. She has contributed to publications as varied as the Financial Times, Big Issue and Vogue and produced the libretto for a requiem for Linda McCartney, Farewell, composed by Michael Berkeley (OUP). She was a prize-winner in both the Ledbury and Bridport poetry competitions in 2008. More profitably she is also a ghost blogger.

Elizabeth’s first novel has recently been published by Virago and she is working on a second. A Hosking Houses Residency enabled her to complete the first of these and she has also held a visiting scholarship at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge to write a family memoir, Sunlight on the Garden (Granta 2006). Of this book a TLS reviewer said: ‘There are echoes … of Sylvia Plath’s ability to combine beauty with irony, and suffering with comedy.’

Elizabeth read Classics at Cambridge as a mature student and has a post-graduate degree. She has taught at the universities of Cambridge, Bristol and Birmingham, has run open poetry workshops at Lucy Cavendish College, is the chair of the Criticos Prize and holds a RLF fellowship at the University of Warwick.

Paxos 2010

May in my old cottage in Greece - coolish nights with fire-flies turning the olive groves into something magical and the peculiarly monotonous hoot of tiny Scops owls (easily and annoyingly mistaken for a mobile phone battery running out). Days are wonderfully warm now, the storms are past, the last wild lilies and purple honesty die away. Walking steeply down to the pebble cove where I swim (well, paddle) it could almost be Dorset: bright green bracken, dog roses, cow parsley, were it not for the olive trees and the great cypresses on the promontory. From here I can see across the bright blue of the Ionian to the great mountains of mainland Epirus, range after range seeming to rise purple and grey straight from the water. Somewhere out there is the mouth of the River Acheron, ‘the river of woe’ and tributary of the River Styx.

This seems appropriate as I am finishing my new novel. The process is not a leisurely sprint to the finishing line and a cool drink but like wrestling with a Hydra-like monster, whose many heads - or characters in my case - need to be brought under control, or frankly, slaughtered to save the plot. I should, of course, have been firmer with them all earlier.

This engraving conveniently depicts the mood of work on this fine Hellenic morning.

The Return of Captain John Emmett (Virago, 2010)

The Great War has been over for three years. Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet in peacetime England violent death continues and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events which have apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to return to the darkest part of the war. Emmett, a former school-friend of Laurence, had served as an infantry officer in France and as Laurence unravels the connections between his suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love story, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even as he begins to live again, Laurence begins to realise that nothing is as it seems and that even those closest to him have their secrets.

Kate Saunders, The Times: 'War poets! The Bloomsbury Group! OMG! If you like to kick back with some very high-class literary wallowing, this fabulously enjoyable novel has absolutely everything. It’s 1920 and Laurence Bartram has come through the First World War but lost his young wife and son. He receives a letter from the sister of his old schoolfriend, John Emmett. Why, she wonders, did Emmett survive the war only to kill himself? Laurence begins to investigate the mysteries surrounding his death. He uncovers various odd goings-on at Emmett’s nursing home for shell-shocked officers, the activities of a group of war poets and a blistering secret shame. Speller’s writing is gorgeous, her research immaculate and very lightly worn. Sheer bliss.'

Catherine Taylor, The Guardian: 'Speller is nicely at ease with the period and the unsettled nature of a world emerging from the fug of conflict.'

William Palmer, The Independent: 'What is remarkable is Speller's skill in summoning up a past time, and the intensity of her writing in the evocation of place and emotion ... an involving and sensitively written examination of guilt and moral culpability: a fine achievement for a first novel. Readers should look forward to Elizabeth Speller's future work.'

Stephanie Cross, The Lady: 'a Christie-esque combination of solid plotting and ingeniousness. A well-written mystery that expresses the horror and pity of war.'

The Independent: 'like Birdsong only better.'

Financial Times: ‘Technically this is a remarkable piece of storytelling... Equally impressive is Speller’s portrait of a fearful and class-ridden England after the armistice.’

Easy Living, April 2010: ‘A multi-layered labyrinth of secrets convene in this taut, tense but richly sensitive story, which will fascinate you from page one.’

Marie-Claire, April 2010: ‘A gripping thriller.’

The Criticos Prize

The Criticos Prize awards £10,000 annually for a book about or inspired by Greece. This year’s short-list has just been released. It’s a terrifically diverse list: a moving Australian novel based on the Iliad, an internationally acclaimed graphic novel, a wonderful new translation of Cavafy’s collected works, a witty and absolutely unsentimental memoir/novel of an Albanian immigrant to Greece and a look at how the discovery of Knossos on Crete inspired Modernism. The winner to be chosen on June 12th 2010.

  • Apostolis Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, Logicomix (Bloomsbury)
  • Kathy Gere, Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism (Chicago)
  • Gazmend Kapllani, A Short Border Handbook (Portobello)
  • David Malouf, Ransom (Chatto and Windus)
  • Daniel Mendelsohn (trans.), Collected Poems by C.P. Cavafy (Knopf)

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