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Philip Paris
My debut novel, The Italian Chapel, was published in 2009 following years of research into Orkney’s famous WW2 chapel. The second book I wrote was a non-fiction - Orkney’s Italian Chapel: The True Story of an Icon - which became the recognised reference book for the building’s history.
My work is varied. Men Cry Alone, a controversial novel about domestic abuse against men, won the 2019 Scottish Association of Writers’ Barbara Hammond trophy for a self-published book. I love to inject humour into my writing, as seen in my memoir Nylon Kid of the North, and Casting Off: a novel about residents in a Highland care home who get up to some hilarious antics when new owners increase fees.
As a writer I’m really excited when I find an important historical event that no-one has written about in the form of a novel. This was the inspiration behind The Italian Chapel and also Effie’s War, which is based on a mass evacuation in the Highlands during November, 1943.
For the last few years I’ve been researching the Scottish witchcraft trials and I am very keen to shine a light on this complex and fascinating subject.