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Writers who influenced me. Steinbeck would come foremost to my mind. I can remember my first reading of 'Of Mice and Men' as clearly as I can recall watching the moon landing on TV in 1969 or where I was when I heard that John Lennon had been shot in 1980.
The poignancy of the story, the humanity of the characters and the intensity of the situation must make this novel one of the greatest pieces of Twentieth Century literature.

Another writer who I can claim has influenced me was George Orwell, but not for the more widely known and read 'Animal Farm' and '1984' but for his satirical take on English class and society in the 1930's with books such as 'Keep The Aspidistra Flying' and 'Coming Up for Air'. Orwell's classic social analysis 'The Road To Wigan Pier' which documents hardship, unemployment and poverty in Northern England with Orwell's caustic abrasiveness and socialist views could well be one of the finest personalized books written. Orwell's descriptive narrative of the ugliness of industrial England gives the reader an almost intimate understanding of the conditional hardship faced by the working class of this era.

The poet Shelley influenced me greatly as I was only a child when I first read 'Ozymandias' and found myself lost in a vast, sandy desert in front of the statued ruins of a great and timeless king. To draw a child into a poem as clearly as a summer's day must make this poet a magician of his genre.
Contemporary writers of fiction can also influence me by giving me a character with substance and an almost three dimensional persona which leaves me unable to carry on with the normality of daily living until the said novel has been read from cover to cover. Jacquelyn Mitchard is one such writer who I have only just discovered but who's powerful story telling in 'The Deep End OF The Ocean' left me feeling I knew the characters as well as I know my own family. Elizabeth Berg, Annie Proulx and Amy Tan are writers who influence me with their remarkable wisdom, ability to draw the reader into their world and for appealing to intelligent and discerning readers.

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