Copyright walesonline
The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman has revealed how a childhood diagnosis continues to impact his writing career today. Despite becoming a familiar face through his game show presenting work, the bestselling novelist has disclosed how a lifelong health condition affects his approach to penning his crime novels. Since launching his literary journey with The Thursday Murder Club in 2020, Richard has achieved remarkable success , publishing over five crime novels in the years that followed. Yet in a candid chat with Saga magazine, he explained how his writing process differs significantly from other authors due to his problems with his sight. Discussing the unique challenges he faces when writing his books, he explained: "Compared to a lot of jobs, you wouldn't call writing 'hard', but these books are fairly big beasts and nystagmus, a condition that affects vision, means that even with large font sizes, I have to sit no more than five or six inches from the screen. It's an intense process." Unlike other writers who can work from various locations, Richard must maintain a strict workspace at home due to his condition: "Nearly all of my writing is done upstairs at the house, where I have everything set up as I want it." Nystagmus affects roughly one in every 1,000 people and is typically identified in early childhood. Marked by uncontrollable eye movements, it isn't always visible to others. The RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) explains: "If you have nystagmus, your eyes are always moving, although it may not always be obvious to you or others." They continued: "The way that nystagmus affects vision varies from person to person; however, it doesn't lead to total loss of sight." Despite living with his eye condition, Richard has successfully written an impressive five novels in the Thursday Murder Club series, with the newest instalment, The Impossible Fortune , hitting shelves earlier this week (Thursday, 25 September). While his novels have achieved bestseller status throughout the years, The Thursday Murder Club was recently shown for a limited cinema release before becoming available on Netflix. At one point, it reached the number one spot on the streaming service. Richard will return to our TV screens this morning on Saturday Kitchen , where he'll appear alongside Matt Tebbutt, Philip Khoury, and Rukmini Iyer at 10 a.m. on BBC One.
