Meet The Team
Alan Wilkinson and Rebecca de Saintonge are both professional writers who have contributed to all the major broadsheets, national radio and television and a wide range of magazines.
For many years they worked together at The Literary Consultancy reading completed manuscripts or works in progress to assess their chances of getting published, and acting as editors and mentors to writers seeking to improve their skills.
Alan Wilkinson
Rebecca de Saintonge
Alan Wilkinson
Alan has written on a wide range of topics for newspapers, magazines, television and radio. He has scripted over 200 TV documentaries, mostly for the BBC, including Holiday Reps, Life of Grime, Someone to Watch Over Me and all eleven series of Vets in Practice.
As a dramatist he spent a year writing for Emmerdale, and made his radio debut with a play The Cowboy and The Tenderfoot about legendary western writer Owen Wister.
As a travel writer Alan’s reviews and features have appeared in such papers as The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Times Higher Educational Supplement, but his main interest is in travel writing, which has been published in The Sunday Times, Telegraph, Yorkshire Post and magazines like Traveller, Country Walking and Bike Culture. Rather than writing about package tours and resort destinations, he concentrates on the individual’s experience of travel – in particular his engagement with the landscape. Alan spends some time each year exploring, mostly in the western United States, where he writes for American Cowboy.
As a researcher and writer of company histories Alan has researched and written a number of company histories, including one for B.P., Molasses to Acid (BP Chemicals, 1998) and is currently working on the history of Morrison Construction.
As an editor and mentor Alan has acted as ‘midwife’ for clients such as Terry Darlington whose Narrow Boat To Carcassonne which sold 30,000 copies in hardback. He has also edited three biographical studies, these include two collections of Great War correspondence – Destiny (Christopher Oughtred, 1996) and Thank God I’m Not a Boy! (Lampada Press, 1997).
Perhaps the best accolade he has received was the briefest – Terry Darlington’s inscription in the copy of Narrow Boat : “To Alan, `il miglio fabbro`”, which echoed T S Eliot’s celebrated dedication to Ezra Pound in The Waste Land.
As a ghost writer Alan’s most recent book was for Wasim Khan, the first British-born Asian to play county cricket. Brim Full of Passion was selected as the 2006 Wisden Cricket Book of the Year. In May 2008 Now The Lad, his ghosted memoirs of a North Yorkshire country copper, is due out with Constable & Robinson.
In 2004 Alan was appointed the Jack Kerouac Writer in Residence in Orlando, Florida. He has also worked as a lecturer and mentor for other writers and continues to read for The Literary Consultancy.
Rebecca de Saintonge
Until December 2004 Rebecca was manager of The Literary Consultancy in London. Now Britain’s most respected critiquing agency, it was set up to provide writers with that crucial feedback that publishers and agents don’t have time to give – even to established authors.
As a journalist and broadcaster she began her professional life as a newspaper reporter. She worked for many years with the BBC and Granada Television as an investigative journalist specializing in programmes on social justice, the penal system and religious affairs. Later she became a regular contributor to Woman’s Hour and You and Yours. More recently she has written for The Weekend Guardian and The Independent.
As a biographer and ghost writer her publications include Outside the Gate (Hodder/Spire), the biography of Nico Smith, a prominent South African anti-apartheid campaigner, and two ghosted autobiographies: Now I Call him Brother (Marshalls), the story of Alec Smith, the rebel son of Ian Smith, who worked under cover for reconciliation in Zimbabwe during UDI, and The Love Hammer (Marshalls), the story of Ken Lancaster, a criminal minder.
As an editor and mentor Rebecca has edited several autobiographies including Dear Sir or Madam: The autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual by Mark Rees (Cassell), Rescued by Love, the story of a woman who killed her husband (Hodder and Stoughton) and An Improbable Career, by Anne Seagrim (published privately).
As lecturer and teacher she has lectured at London University in medieval social history and is currently half way through a PhD. She continues to work as a freelance journalist and teacher of creative writing as well as running LifeLines Press.
Works in progress: she is currently writing a journal of modern spirituality and researching a historical novel set in the middle ages.
Awards for work in journalism and design. In the 1980s Rebecca developed and managed Falcon AVA, an award-winning audio-visual company. Her work there was bought by BBC children’s television and won a British Industrial and Scientific Film Award for the best new company. Later she and her husband moved to Zimbabwe where she worked as a writer and broadcaster, winning another national award, this time for magazine layout.
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