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‘Not the son my father wanted’

When Lynn Barber first met the eccentric, reclusive English writer in Tuscany 12 years ago, she was already one of a handful of devoted fans. They became friends, but even when he accidentally wrote a comic bestseller, he still preferred his remote hilltop to the literary circuit. Now he’s come down from the mountain and tells her why

Lyn Barber
Sunday October 29, 2006
The Observer

There is a looming danger that James Hamilton Paterson, just as he reaches retirement age, is about to become popular. This will certainly upset those devoted fans, including me, who have admired his writing for decades but hugged it as an exquisite secret to our chests. We were a tiny cult, but we liked our exclusivity. James H-P seemed to like it too – he never made the slightest eff ort to publicise his books by going on chat shows or submitting to interviews. Consequently they seldom sold more than 4,000 copies and the book he considers his best, Playing with Water, sold just 150 when it was fi rst published in 1987. He was never seen at London literary parties because he lived on a mountain top in Tuscany for two-thirds of the year and on a beach in the Philippines for the other third. The Guardian described him as ‘among the most reclusive and mysterious of British literary exiles’; he described himself as a ‘rat-poor literary drifter’ and ‘a professional absentee’.