Matthew James Hunt

This is the expensive Italian pipe stolen by the Brighton pickpocket who was subsequently the main source of inspiration for the physicality and personality of Maggie in I Am Not Gog. It was on our anniversary and we had decided to treat ourselves to a stay at the Hilton Metropole hotel. We’d had a nice night out and were walking back to the Hotel very merrily indeed. I was smoking a different pipe, which gave the pickpocket, who was coming the other way, a conversational ‘in’ by her chirpily asking me why I smoked them. I explained that I wanted to avoid the chemicals they put in cigarettes and mass-marketed tobaccos. She laughed at my drunken earnestness and gave me a hug, during which she...

We need to talk about evil and what it's doing in the novel I Am Not Gog.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Although opinion varies on this, I see Ephesians 6:12 as a short list of three types of evil forces in descending order of authority, the last clause being a summation of them all. In context, coming after the exclusion of ‘flesh and blood’, Paul appears to be talking about purely spiritual forces. But, whether you believe in spiritual forces or not, we all know that what everyone calls ‘evil’ becomes manifested, ultimately, by flesh a...