Hilary Seabrook - writer, podcaster, musician

I have spent the last five weeks aiming to complete my first novel (which has been on the back burner for the last ten years) by the end of August. There was a plan in place, including spending the last week on a personal writer's retreat in Crete. This was my office - for an hour or so before breakfast and more snatched moments before and after dinner - in the beautiful Aquila Rithymna Beach hotel on Crete's north coast. Now I have returned home with the first draft of A Satisfactory Conclusion completed. It needs editing before I submit it to agents, but we'll see how far it gets. My deadline for completing the editing process is just another 11 days, in the rather more prosaic setting of home. That is probably right - I need to focus on the polishing of this draft to achieve my best work.

I enjoyed a fascinating evening in the audience of an erudite discussion between four actors who have taken on the role of Othello in the eponymous play. It was part of the 'Shakespeare and Race' season at Shakespeare's Globe and it was good to hear an open discussion about the deliberate racism in Othello , which can make the play difficult to watch. As I'm going to see the current Globe production in a couple of weeks, this was a great opportunity to hear from some past actors who've taken on the role, as well as Andre Holland, the current Othello.  

A great exhibition at Hitchin British Schools Museum takes visitors back 100 years to the First World War. By following the experiences of real soldiers, it's possible to experience something of what our troops went through. The recreation of a trench is chilling, except for the probably unrealistic cleanliness. I suspect most trenches were much dirtier and smellier than this one. When visiting the battlefields of France and Belgium, I've seen trenches which have been restored in situ, but it does no harm to have even a sanitised reminder. I'm a great fan of the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon et al, and this recreated trench doesn't come as close to bringing it home as their work does. The wider exhibition tells the stories of people at home and at war, of men and women and how the war touched them. As we approach 100 years since the final end of fighting, it's always worth remembering the people who lived through it and those who died a...

I watched the film Mary Shelley more feeling I should than with any high expectations. In fact, it was a delight, not least for its portrayal of a strong woman who - almost exactly 200 years ago - created one of the most brilliant tales of science, medicine and abandonment. Mary Shelley is less about Shelley the poet and more about Wollstonecraft the feminist writer and thinking - for the writer of Frankenstein clearly owes more to the influence of her mother and her writings than they do to those of her then lover. In fact, it would appear that her writing of Frankenstein was influenced more by Dr Polidori, who she met in Geneva while visiting Lord Byron with her lover and sister. Discussions with the doctor seem to have fuelled Shelley's dreams, which are portrayed in the film as both intense and realistic. She sees not only a scientist bringing the dead to life, but also her own dead baby being once more alive. Many critics of Mary Shelley have felt...

Hitchin, looking north into Bedfordshire