Paul Johnston, born in Edinburgh in 1957, graduated from Oxford University with a First Class Honours Degree in Modern Greek and an MPhil in Comparative Literature.

 

He is the author of twelve novels. Of these, Body Politic won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Crime Novel of 1997. The Last Red Death won the Sherlock Award for Best Detective Novel in 2004.

 

In 1989, he left the UK to live on a small Greek island and now divides his time between Scotland and the Peloponnese. His wife is Greek, and he is the father of three children.

 

PAUL JOHNSTON

For further information, visit www.paul-johnston.co.uk

---

Quintessence

 

 

I made an illicit still

and poured into it all I had.

 

I burned peat and wood beneath the cauldron

until a pale spirit trickled out.

 

The base materials and hate

I’d been carrying for decades

evaporated.

 

What was left

a single miniature’s worth

I buried in my overgrown garden.

 

I destroyed the illicit still

and kept its liquor secret

 

until you arrived unheralded

a beam of long-matured light

from a fertile, far-off star.

 

We mixed my paltry measure

with your gallon-jar of goodness.

 

We drank that quintessential cocktail

and I was shaken into love.