Joseph Delaney interview

In The Times, Amanda Craig talks to author Joseph Delaney about his best-selling children's books, the Wardstone Chronicles.

Delaney is a master story-teller, as rooted in his native Lancashire as Alan Garner is in Cheshire. He has sold more than 500,000 copies in 20 countries, and deserves every bit of his success.

“My partner Marie got up at 4am to go to work, so I’d write between 6.15 and 7.30 every morning before going to teach,” he recalls. “Carolyn Whittaker, the only agent I approached who didn’t turn me down, never earned a penny from me for ten years while I was trying to write for adults. So, like Tom [narrator of The Spook’s Apprentice], I had a long apprenticeship,” he says wryly.