Welcome to The Imperfect Umbrella

And thank you for stopping by.

I’m Mark Diacono - writer, walker, cook, gardener, and photographer. I live in the south west of England. I’ve written over a dozen books, winning Food Book of the Year twice, and Garden Book of the Year twice. More here.

If you came here having followed the award-winning blog I began in 2002, welcome back; if you are new to it, it’s great to have you. I’ve missed that direct writing, the comments, the community of the blog - so I’m thrilled to be here, launching my new writing home.

I write mostly about food and gardening, but if you have one of my books you’ll know a rice pudding recipe might include a story about my favourite childhood bicycle handlebars, or that time I was chased through the streets of Istanbul for reasons unclear. So while it is usual to have a narrow umbrella of a title under which to write, I know I may write about subjects as seemingly unrelated as mulberries, that I knew - before I was told - that my father was dead, of the time I locked eyes with Eli Wallach, of the best £13 I’ve ever spent, and of waking up on the tube opposite the bandleader of the Buena Vista Social Club as I was on my way to buy their album; hence The Imperfect Umbrella.

Experience tells me that my best writing happens when I allow there to be natural threads rather than place myself under an umbrella I’m constantly looking out from under. I hope you agree. This is one of the things I find most exciting about this new writing home, it is a home for everything I want to write about - food and gardening, yes, and also beyond.

I also want to share my experience of writing, of having more than a dozen (mostly award-winning) books published and having written for numerous newspapers and magazines. So if you want to know how to approach a publisher, about agents, writing a proposal, developing an idea into a proposal into a book, sign up: I will share all I know. Down the line, I may run workshops, writing intensives, and more. I will almost certainly take you through the process - live, in real time - of trying to get a book away; from scribbling the first sentence that crystallises a fleeting thought into an idea, through drafting a proposal, the failures, rejections: the lot.

I hope you will be an active part of this community too. Please feel encouraged to comment, ask questions, suggest, share, enlighten and embellish wherever you feel the urge. There will be snapshots and reveals of whatever book I am working on, you might virtually join a photoshoot; you might even cause me to take that book in a direction I hadn’t intended.

What can you expect? A great deal of enthusiasm and - as with my books - the best writing I can create. I will post at least weekly; I’ll also post a regular compendium of what is flowing into my eyes, ears, nose and mouth as it will be affecting what pours out of these fingers, and it may be that some of it brings you pleasure.

Most of what is here will always be free, though there are some great reasons (for us both) to pay-subscribe that I hope you’ll take a quick look at towards the bottom of this page.

So please do subscribe in whichever way suits you, it will be a real pleasure to have you here as part of this.

Let’s see where it takes us.

More soon,
Mark