"At a certain point, I realised that researching the historical record was inhibiting me. The poem went cold and progress slowed. In the end it took five years to complete, and only when I knew I was nearly finished did I begin a second wave of research, in which I tried to check that the things I’d invented weren’t too far off the mark. In the mean time, what helped me to bring my characters back to life (to me anyway) was thinking of three less obviously relevant figures: Tony Blair, Nick Leeson, and Myra Hindley." Paul Batchelor Poetry

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