Leonie Flynn with Matt Whyman

The evening featured four of their best-known authors, Paul Bajoria, Linda Buckley Archer, Justin Somper and Matt Whyman in conversation with Leonie Flynn, editor of the Ultimate Book Guides. The location was an achingly trendy bar – a treat in itself as I can’t remember the last time I was allowed in anywhere like that – and that was just the beginning. The discussion, which featured readings from each of the writers was thought provoking and well-structured.

Paul Bajoria suggested that modern authors create much more realistic villains than those that existed in his childhood whilst Justin Somper was in favour of the villain who is actually likeable and so provides some moral ambiguity – not so much villains as anti-heroes who reflect the spectrum of real life where everyone is a shifting blend of good and bad. Linda Buckley Archer argued that a hero can only be as good, or as interesting as the foe they face – that the villain’s function is to test the hero to the limit.

Villains have changed over the years, possibly because children are less squeamish, but also because modern authors are prepared to look to a wider variety of sources for their villains – high culture has given us Iago and Edmund whilst JR Ewing is still a baddie who lingers on in the popular imagination – well, he does if you are of a certain age. Villains also allow authors to explore violence and its consequences in a way that is safe for teenagers but enables readers to consider the moral complexity of some situations. It is Matt Whyman who has really taken on this aspect of villainy and whose need to write a book with an explosion on the front led him to create villains who don’t recognise themselves as such which makes them perhaps the saddest and scariest of all villains.