I spent 2006 writing a novel called The Daughter Game which explores the relationship between a teacher and one of her female pupils. Now, on the eve of its publication, I've been thinking about teachers in general, and the effect two of them in particular had on me.
A corollary of the fact that good books almost always make bad films (and that successful adaptations should be taken as no more than freaks or flukes - No Country For Old Menbeing a case in point after last night's Oscars) is that many of the best films come from inferior source material.
Flicking through the latest edition of The Bookseller, I see that there are four titles in the non-fiction top twenty list of bestselling books which come under the bracket 'Life Stories', as in, for example, Maria Landon's Daddy’s Little Earner, or Constance Briscoe's Beyond Ugly.
