“I hadn’t written a book in so long when I sat down that I didn’t have any voices in my head about how people would receive it. I didn’t even know if I’d find a publisher.”He has, and they are greeting The Religion rather as the arrival of the British navy would have been marked in colonial times All flags are waving. One whole sheet of the three-page press release that accompanies The Religion is full of quotations not from critics but from Jonathan Cape staff. When I sat down to write a novel again, I wouldn’t speak to anyone for five days at a time.” The peace, though, was much valued. I just got fed up of them not seeing the light of day.”In the autumn of 2003, he made his escape and disappeared off to a borrowed “log cabin in the woods kind of thing” in upper New York State to write The Religion (Cape, £18.99) “Screenwriting is a very sociable process,” he says “There are endless meetings. Yes, it’s terribly frustrating but that’s the nature of the business It’s part of the job in Hollywood to be frustrated Even the biggest directors are constantly thwarted And I love writing screenplays. With hindsight, does he regret the choices he made? “When intelligent, charming, interesting people are inviting you to do things in the film business, it’s hard to turn it down.

With very blue eyes and very red lips, he is undoubtedly striking, the overall impression only slightly mitigated by just a hint of Wayne Rooney in the set of his face.For eight years Willocks divided his time between Hollywood and London where he carried on practising part-time as a doctor. In the end, I must have written about 18 other screenplays that didn’t get produced but I’ve nothing bad to say about Hollywood. The combined burden of maintaining those two careers meant something had to give It has been a long time since his last novel. His black suit is well and fashionably cut while his freckly skin is very pale, untouched by the Californian sun. Then Alan got killed in a car accident, but the process continued. In the end I just got so fed up with rewriting.”Willocks’s red curly hair is fading to grey as it meets his face, but there is something very Mick Hucknall in his look.

The medical career that he ran in parallel with his writing and producing exploits became mired in controversy in the late 1990s when he and colleagues from London’s Stapleford Clinic for treating drug addicts were investigated for misconduct by the General Medical Council.Willocks was eventually cleared, but the experience has led him to turn his back on medicine. And his screenplay for what admirers see as his masterpiece, Green River Rising, the original reason he went over to Hollywood, still has not, after “at least 25 rewrites”, made it into production.
“It is a classic Hollywood tale,” Willocks recounts, sitting forward edgily on his seat at Soho House, his London club. “Warner Brothers took an option on Green River Rising and Alan Pakula [The Pelican Brief, Sophie's Choice, Klute] wanted me to write it First this actor or director was attached, then another It changed with the wind And with every change there was a rewrite needed. He was even romantically linked by the gossip columns with Madonna. Yet he also saw his first novel, Bad City Blues, swallowed up by the collapse of Robert Maxwell’s publishing empire when its publication date with a Maxwell imprint coincided with the death of the pension-fund plundering tycoon It took another six years for it to make it into bookshops.

The day-long event will feature poetry, music, hog-roasts, bell-ringing, rowing, a brass band, a donkey derby and a celebrity auction in aid of New Padstow Lifeboat Station. More details at www.johnbetjeman .. Good fortune and bad luck often go hand-in-hand Tim Willocks has had his share of both. His 1994 book, Green River Rising, a violent, merciless account of convicts sweltering in the Texas heat, was hailed as one of the best prison novels ever written and quickly achieved cult status.

Its success saw him sought out by Hollywood where he went to work with some of the biggest names in the film industry as first a screenwriter and later a producer. No fewer than four company execs, including chief executive Gail Rebuck, flew to New York to meet him and negotiate the deal. Rebuck noted that signing Patterson was like “acquiring a one-man publishing industry”.
* The actual centenary of John Betjeman’s birth on 28 August will be celebrated with what’s described as “a huge knees-up” in Carruan Farm, Polzeath Wadebridge on the north Cornish coast. Having been published by HarperCollins, and lately Headline, he has now signed with Random House for a sum that is said to redefine the term “multi-million”.