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I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Alan Bradley

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Alan Bradley
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 10
Novelist
Writer
City of Toronto
Love
Reader
Magazines
Grew
Newspapers
Books
British
Transplanted
Family
English
Piles
House
Brought
Surrounded
Book
England
Grandmother
Great
Filled
Developed
Really
Early
Canada

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Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
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I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material - something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.
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During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.
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I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.
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One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.
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The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.
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Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death lived for death lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life.
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I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.
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My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.
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As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No ... eight days a week.
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