Really coming down
The Quantocks! I think this comic might be the last time I typed that word. None of this is very familiar to me. I’ve never been to the Quantock Hills. Maybe now’s the time. Who’s stopping me? I’m sure when I wrote this story that I had a good idea of exactly where the retreat was, and how the various authors got there. I will have got a map out, a paper road map, and traced my finger along it. Today alas, my modus opeandi in 2011 is utterly opaque.
It’s probably a common name, but I can’t read “Hugo Nance” without thinking of the late actor Jack “A fish in the percolator” Nance.
Given the location of the Quantocks, Barry must have been making a detour between his London home (Bloomsbury agency seen in ‘Author Unknown’) and his Snowdonia retreat. In my headcanon, he was just popping into Tredregyn to talk to an exciting new prospect, wannabe children’s author Tom Pendennis.