Hello and thank you for visiting my blog. I am a PhD and BPTC graduate. I hold a first-class law degree from Hull University and an LLM with distinction from Manchester University. I am a county court advocate.
I enjoy reading and writing fiction. I am particularly interested in psychological suspense and literary fiction. The authors that I admire include Kazuo Ishiguro, Erin Kelly, Louise Doughty and Gillian Flynn.
I have attended creative writing courses organised by Arvon, First Page and Moniack Mhor. At the latter, I received very helpful guidance from Val McDermid and Louise Welsh. I have attended writing groups. I was selected for the Free Read Scheme which is founded by the Arts Council. My work was assessed by Angela Clarke. I was also shortlisted for the June 2020 David Higham Associates Open Day for Under-Represented Writers. I was selected for a critique by Anna Barrett as an underrepresented writer.
My adventure with fiction began when I when I tried to work on a book which was a semi-autobiographical novel of alienation. Val McDermid and Angela Clarke guided me to write something more commercial: All in my Head, a psychological suspense novel inspired by works such as They All Fall Down by Tammy Cohen, You by Caroline Kepnes and the film Unsane, directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Maybe it is just her obsession.
When Izabela witnesses a murder, she finds herself sectioned by the powerful men she accuses. Incarcerated for paranoid schizophrenia, can Izabela prove a crime has been committed when she can’t trust anyone, including herself?
Remote, emotionless, medicated, she is adrift. Because of her language difficulties as a foreign student, she is also the perfect person to be gaslighted and manipulated in all sorts of ways.
All in my Head tells the story of a Polish student aspiring to the Bar. At the beginning of the novel, Izabela is a career-oriented person, but she becomes obsessed with her pupil master, and she tries to save him at any cost. She needs to prove his innocence, but she has her own inner demons to fight. The work is unique in the fact that the murder and gaslighting occurs before the hospitalisation and the stalker is a female.
All in my Head is also a psychoanalytic study of alienation in an ethnically foreign country and, in this respect, is reminiscent of The Stranger by Maria Kuncewiczowa. It may appeal to fans of Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty, Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan and Mine by J.L. Butler.
Adding to the previous, I am also actively pursuing a career at law. I have excellent research skills and I recently completed a PhD in law. I am capable of producing very good pieces of work. My essays were consistently considered to be the best in the year. My public law problem question was also the best in the last seven years. I also published a number of papers.
In my academic writing, I always tried to devise interesting and different solutions. For example, in my jurisprudence essay, I linked Dworkin’s theory with French existentialism. This was acknowledged by a high mark and the award of the Raymond Smith Memorial Prize in Jurisprudence (the University of Hull, 2008). I also received the Professor FW Taylor Fund Prize which is awarded for the highest dissertation mark in semester 1.
I have done a number of mini-pupillages, and because of them feel that the law is perfect for me. I love its arbitrary yet rigid boundaries and the fact that the parties can be caught out on the tiniest detail. I have always yearned to take an active part, no matter how small, in a case that established some significant legal principle. Chancery law especially appeals to me as my strong writing skills means I can methodically distil the correct legal principle and I am good at distilling the correct legal principle. I believe I am good at analysing people and at drawing conclusions about them. I wish to learn more about judicial reasoning by observing it from the court room, analysing judgments that I was involved in, and challenging my reasoning even further. I hope that some day, after the right training, my people skills and analytical skills will make me an excellent advocate.
Chancery law is also intellectually stimulating and requires those involved to engage in deep analysis. There is a great deal of interesting case law, and even settled case law is subject to review. For example, Eclairs Group Ltd v JKX Oil & Gas Plc, which provided the narrow version of the proper purpose rule, appears to be inconsistent with the letter of settled law and the Companies Act 2006. Odd judgments are subject to meticulous legal analysis. I like the possibility of looking for novel technical remedies for clients such as the trust remedy in Petrodel v Prest. I also like the fact that in chancery adjudication there is a need for a skeleton argument so the whole of your argument is communicated.
I also like the fact that there is the potential for searching for old, obsolete precedents that might help my clients, such as Belmont Finance v Williams Furniture which was followed in Bilta (UK) Ltd v Nazir.
