Tony Bradman Quotes

These days it seems that every big, new, heavily promoted children's book is rather like the ghost of poor old Jacob Marley. Each one comes trailing a long, clanking chain of references - in the form of overexcited press releases and slightly hysterical jacket blurbs - to bestsellers of a supposedly similar nature.

- Tony Bradman

'All Quiet on the Western Front' is just sort of there isn't it? Every single trope of the First World War, and anti-war writing in general, is in there.

- Tony Bradman

I was delighted when Booktrust asked me to be chair of judges for the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2010.

- Tony Bradman

In 1965, I was 11 and in my last year at Junior school. I was living with my mum and older sister in a rented flat in south London - my parents had separated when I was five and got divorced a couple of years later, which was unusual at the time. My dad was working abroad, and I hadn't seen him for several years.

- Tony Bradman

I have to confess that I've never been a great fan of Christmas or, as it's known in our house, The Monster That Ate the Last Third of the Year. It's mostly the rampant consumerism I object to, but I'm also a little wary of the annual crop of new Christmas stories and sometimes wonder why anyone bothers.

- Tony Bradman

Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson have both been writing for a long time. In 30 years, will writers of that quality have been able to serve the same sort of apprenticeship? Not unless they can make enough money now to live on.

- Tony Bradman

I don't usually like teen novels written in the present tense, particularly those told from a first-person viewpoint. Too many writers seem to believe that using either or both devices automatically imbues their stories with deep seriousness and a contemporary feel.

- Tony Bradman

There are several occupational hazards for book reviewers, chief among them being the Curse of the Jaded Palate - that sinking feeling when you start reading a new book and begin to suspect that you've seen it all before.

- Tony Bradman

My parents were of the generation that lived through the Second World War, but I grew up listening to my mother recounting her dad's tales about his terrible experiences during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 and later on the Western Front.

- Tony Bradman

I studied Wilfred Owen for my English A Level, and that led me to Sassoon and Blunden, Rosenberg and Thomas.

- Tony Bradman

If your characters are two-dimensional and your plot uncompelling, it won't matter how incredibly detailed and believable your fantasy world might be.

- Tony Bradman

At school, we'd studied the Romans and the Saxons, and I was fascinated by it all. So I made my dad take me to the British Museum as often as possible.

- Tony Bradman

Mum told me stories about her time in the Women's Royal Navy, and about her dad, who had died before I was born - he'd been sent to Australia as a child, then joined the Australian Army in the First World War and fought at Gallipoli.

- Tony Bradman

Children's publishing is the jewel in the crown of British publishing.

- Tony Bradman

Sally Gardner must drive her publishers to distraction: no sooner have they worked out how to market one brilliant book than she delivers another that is just as brilliant but totally different.

- Tony Bradman

I know one author whose royalty income has been halved from £34,000 a year to £16,000.

- Tony Bradman

Fantasy is a demanding genre.

- Tony Bradman

Once the world has been created, the fantasy author still has to bring the story's characters to life and unfold a gripping plot. That's why good fantasy is such a hard act to bring off.

- Tony Bradman