A round-up of book signings, author interviews, news and events.
Eddie Thompson continues to produce simple, usually short verses musing on the vicissitudes of modern life, from lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic to lighting the fire. His verses are based on his day-to-day experiences, observations and thoughts about life, and are witty, original and usually light-hearted.
This is the seventh volume in the series.
REFLECTIONS OF A CHILDREN’S SOCIAL WORKER
Simon Scott worked as a children and families social worker for more than forty years in South Africa and the UK, dealing with a wide variety of domestic crises and helping hundreds
of children to find safety and security with their families or elsewhere. It has proved a demanding but rewarding career, but the knowledge that most of the children Simon has worked
with have been given a new opportunity to lead happy and secure lives has made it all worthwhile.
Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Social Workers’ Benevolent Trust, whose aim is to help social workers who find themselves in financial difficulties.
GROWING UP IN TWO CONTRASTING ENGLISH WORLDS
John Hedge was brought up, very largely, in a traditional English pub (the ‘bright bar’). Less traditional were the bitter rows between his loving but troubled publican parents, who sent him away for a Masonic boarding school education in the misguided belief that he would be happier away from the booze and the brickbats. Though this was meant for the best, it left him scarred by the oppressive, secretive culture of ‘Ston’ to the extent that in his teens he endured a catastrophic breakdown.
In looking back from his peaceful later years to life with his loving, blundering and ill-fated parents, he has given us a moving and beautifully written memoir.
Guy Warner pioneered the introduction of command computers into submarines. How this came about and his follow up in the defence industry are revealed in this enthralling memoir. However, the call of the sea was not to be denied, and he went on to become a passionate and competitive sailor in his own yachts, in which sailing escapades abounded. He has also needed resilience in his colourful voyage through life, as it has been troubled along the way by family tragedies.
A story of the ups and downs of an unusual life told with humour, honesty and frankness.
Lady Rose Luce’s frank and entertaining account of more than 60 years of adventures around the world with her husband Richard, former MP, Minister, Vice-Chancellor, Governor of Gibraltar and Lord Chamberlain to The Queen’s Household.
Rose Luce has had an unusually varied and interesting life. Her early family life and jobs in parliament and America, later including a leading role in the English-Speaking Union and much charitable work in the UK and Gibraltar, were buttressed by her love of music and singing in choirs. Above all, as the wife of Richard Luce, she supported his long and varied career over 60 years as an MP, Minister, Vice-Chancellor, Governor and Lord Chamberlain to The Queen’s Household.
Richard writes in his memoirs Ringing the Changes: “I cannot describe adequately in words what her support, love and companionship throughout our marriage have meant to me. I could not have managed my work in Africa, the struggle to get into Parliament, politics, being a Minister, a Vice-Chancellor, a Governor or Lord Chamberlain without her.”
In this book, Rose describes in the most vivid, entertaining and human way her life supporting Richard in all his many and challenging tasks.
A no-punches-pulled account of a top surgeon’s life at the battlefront and on the NHS front line.
As a young surgeon, David Jackson left a promising NHS hospital career to pursue challenge, travel and adventure with the British Army. He soon got plenty of all three. He served on the surgical front line in Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands and Bosnia and found himself dealing with the worst horrors and tragedies of war, looking after soldiers with appalling, often fatal, injuries and using all the skills at his disposal to save lives and limbs. The fact that he never lost his sense of humour, despite a sometimes harrowing personal life, comes over clearly in this colourful, moving and often very entertaining book.
This memoir, written as it was as events happened, contains strong language, images of violence and surgery, and sexual themes.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT SURGEON IN THE RAW
AWARD WINNING READ: 2021 B.R.A.G MEDALLION HONOREE
“His service as an army sawbones included service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and Bosnia….much of considerable interest” (The Battlefields Trust)
“Kept my attention rivetted….raw with emotion, wry sense of humour” (Military, Friends of Millbank)
“…the horrors of working in makeshift military surgical units…,,the pain and despair the breakdown of a marriage can inflict” (Mid Wales and Shropshire Journal)
“Enthralling and hard to put down” (Intelligence and National Security Journal)
“Saving lives and escaping death in wars and conflicts across the globe…..(Cambrian News)
“… nothing short of jaw-dropping … one wonders how Jackson coped with it all …. A work of exceptional depth, clarity and, surprisingly, humour … an enormously absorbing read that will stay with you for a long time.” (Stretton Focus, April 2021)
In this book of illustrated humorous verse, we take up the challenge of throwing some light on a few possibly puzzling phenomena encountered in real life, though how much light is hard to say. We must hope that others will in the future improve upon our efforts.
For example, why do dogs so often delight in snapping wasps out of the air? How hungry can they be? The reason we have arrived at will astound you. There again, what is a completely novel way to win a cooking competition – even if you can’t cook? It’s all here.
Have you thought about handbags recently? Why are they so often made from crocodile hide? We wonder about this.
Apart from all this, would you like to find a way to make the summer longer and the winter shorter? Thought so! We show how to do it.
There are so many other subjects, including advice on how best to cheer up an octopus that has been insulted, and an investigation on alternative meanings of various sayings, such as: ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’. This one could be a real lifesaver!
A question uppermost in many people’s minds is whether reincarnation is a real possibility. We have made some small progress here perhaps.
All these things and many more are considered, but the book is not intended primarily for children. All humans would benefit in some way from the homespun wisdom that is on offer here, and if their English is not as good as their French, there are explanations of the poems in French as well, though the poems are in English of course.
In all, there are 33 poems in rhyming verse, each with an excellent illustration in full colour by Reine Mazoyer. What’s not to like – as they say nowadays?
As the years roll by following the loss of her beloved husband at the age of only 54 because of what she considers to have been a faulty diagnosis at a major hospital, followed by the wrong treatment, Doreen Kerry continues to celebrate their 37 happy years together through the medium of her writing.
In this latest book in a series written to keep alive the memory of ‘Hubby’, and to continue to celebrate the happy years they had together before it all came to a tragic and premature end, Doreen
indulges in a light-hearted exploration of the celebration of Christmas and the enchanted world of the movies they enjoyed together.
“Hubby’s death continues to leave me aching and stunned… grief has been an awful place to live over these past years.”
See Doreen Kerry’s Amazon author page
In Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Crucifixion, the young Roman Tribune Flavius Silvanus, still grieving the death of his beloved Princess Farrah at the hands of rebels, is called back to Rome following the unexpected death of his father. What he learns there sets him on a dangerous mission to find out the truth behind his father’s mysterious death – a mission which will lead him to the cruel emperor Caligula and to the greatest challenge of his life. This third book in the Power and the Glory trilogy is a gripping story of bravery and betrayal, brutality and friendship.
A Concorde pilot’s career, from the school glider to the sound barrier
Michael Riley knew he wanted to be a pilot as soon as he took off solo in the school glider at the age of 16. The career that followed incorporated everything from aerobatic machines and classic aircraft to jumbo jets and, ultimately, Concorde.
In a colourful career he rubbed shoulders with many of the best-known names in the flying world, and piloted celebrities from Paul McCartney, Liza Minelli and Diana Ross to David Frost and Margaret Thatcher. This is his intriguing story.
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