Vapour Trails in the Blue novelist Mark le Claire's earlier career as a painter saw him exhibiting his work widely in England and abroad, including a solo exhibition at the Barbican Centre, London, in 1987. He continued painting, in pastels rather than oils, during the thirty years he lived in Spain, and it was there that he began writing, publishing Vapour Trails in the Blue, based on his life in Spain, in 2007. After returning to England, he continued writing, working on a film script set in post-Civil War Spain. He now divides his time between his home in Folkestone and a flat in Tangier, Morocco. The John Diaries is the second published volume taken from the personal diaries he has kept since 1979.