Fi Phillips

Brought up as an only child in a house full of books that I was given free rein to investigate, the books that I always found myself drawn to were theatre scripts, and most specifically two collections of Shakespeare's plays. The one with the green cover in the photo belonged to my mum. The other collection, a children's version of Shakespeare's plays with certain sections summarised rather than printed in full, was my father's. I spent many an hour as a child and teenager, thumbing through these books, visualising them on stage, playing the parts in my mind and yes, reciting the speeches in my bedroom - quietly. At high school, I was keen to learn more about the plays but equally disappointed when my enthusiasm wasn't shared by many of my friends, and horrified when certain teachers presented the plays in a way that not only bored their class but turned many people off Shakespeare for life. The works of Shakespeare are treated as part of the British, if not...

My bookshelves are overloaded to the point of collapse with all the reading material my family have collected over the years. With each new purchase, I rearrange them a little. With each house move, I cull a percentage of them but that always makes me want to buy more. My children devour books so quickly that every birthday and Christmas present list includes at least one new book for them. There are some books though that I will never part with, however full the bookshelves become, because they're tied in with my life journey and soaked with memories. They're keepers. 1. On Writing by Stephen King As a writer learning the craft, I'm drawn to discovering how successful published authors have arrived at that point in their lives. I don't fare very well with instructive 'how to' books on writing. Sharing a writer's personal journey is the best way for me to learn. I've read several books of this kind but the best I've come across so far has be...

All good things come in threes, or so they say. But when three bad things happen, people often say, "Well, that's your three over with now". Three is a number that appears to permeate almost every area of human culture. In the world of mathematics, three is a prime number (divisible only by one and itself). Three sides and three angles form a triangle, often seen by mathematicians as the 'perfect shape'. Scientifically, three is the number of constituents of an atom and we perceive our world through three dimensions. In religion, there is the Christian Trinity, the Hindu Trimerti and the Three Jewels of Buddhism. The list goes on and on. We seem to love, fear and sometimes worship the concept of 'three'. Storytellers are no different. Where would the Greek tale-spinners have been without their Three Fates? Shakespeare chose to feature three witches in his Scottish Play (oh, all right then, Macbeth). There are Three Musketeers and three books in the Lord of...