David Downing: ‘When something you’ve made up brings tears to your own eyes, you know you’re doing something right’​

My Life in Books

Author David Downing's 'Union Station' comes out next month

David Downing

David Downing has been a professional writer for 50 years. In the last 20 of those he has concentrated on the eight-book ‘Station’ series, about an Englishman reluctantly engaged in espionage before, during and after World War II. The eighth – Union Station – comes out next month from Old Street Publishing.

The books on your bedside table? I’m currently reading the latest in Michael Russell’s ‘City of’ Dublin police series. The history is fascinating, the characters engaging, and it’s all beautifully understated. There’s also Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, which I expect to be even better on second reading, just as [his previous novel] All The Light We Cannot See was.