Peter May: returning to a runaway youth

The author tells Hannah Ellis-Petersen how he has gone back to an abortive teenage adventure for the basis of his new novel, Runaway

It was very early one morning almost two years ago, walking through the frosty streets of Glasgow, deserted aside from the drunks asleep on the bank of the River Clyde, that author Peter May found himself confronted with a vivid memory from more than four decades ago.

Standing in the city’s Central station, he suddenly recalled the moment his 17-year-old self had stepped onto this very same platform. Having run away to London a month earlier, this reluctant return to Glasgow in 1969 had marked the end of a misjudged teenage adventure, one which – while being an unmitigated failure – had marked a pivotal point in May’s life. And now, it has become the basis of his latest novel.

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