The Warwickshire Cakes & Ale Trail was successfully launched at the Alcester Food Festival in May when Canon David Capron together with the Court Leet Ale Taster led proceedings. A lot of interest was shown and lot of books were sold. I plan to offer talks on this book, initially to groups in the Warwickshire area.
I have now done all preliminary work on the next (and probably last) in this series The Staffordshire Cakes and Ale Trail. The route is from Burton-on-Trent (appropriately home of the National Brewery Centre) via the canal to Dr Johnson's Lichfield, over Cannock Chase to the ancient settlement of Penkridge, through agricultural land to Eccleshall. Then it's northwards past Wedgwood's Barlaston to Stone, and on up to Cheadle in the Staffordshre Moorlands, before returning south past Alton Towers to reach Uttoxeter and past the site of the Faulds Explosion and Turbury Castle back to Burton. John Rowe and I walked the whole route between 11th and 17th May 2011. I expect the book to come out some time in the summer of 2012.
FICTION WRITING
Known Unto God has been published under the Pierrepoint Press imprint and was successfully launched in Crete in time for the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Crete in May 2011. It tells the story of Meredith Wilson who in 1940 comes to rescue two brothers, Bert and Bill Ennis, in war-ravaged Birmingham and falls in love. In May 1941, Bill Ennis led by a young Cretan boy, Nikos Themistocles, escapes from the German advance after the Battle of Crete to the south coast of the island but dies before he can be rescued. In 2006, twenty years after her husband Bert’s death, the adult Nikos Themistocles takes Meredith Ennis to visit the site of Bill’s death and her son Tom discovers a terrible family secret.
My new Tallyforth mystery, working title Lavington's Hole, set in and around Bridgnorth and beginning with the discovery of the body of a young girl, daughter of the Governor of Bridgnorth Castle at the time of the Civil War, and a cache of letters written by a young Parliamentarian soldier to her, is undergoing revision after some really helpful reader comment from two friends in Bridgnorth. I haven't got on as fast with this as I hoped so I guesss it's going to be 2012 at the earliest before this sees the light of day.
Brown Baby - my tale of a black G.I. sent to Britain prior to D-Day who falls in love with a Herefordshire girl and the result of that love affair - is still currently doing the rounds of publishers and literary agents.
I have made minimal progress with a new novel but, as it's at a very early stage and I keep changing the original plan, I won't say anything more about this just yet.
OTHER WRITING
I have another new venture definitely going ahead with a new publishing house called Bankhouse Books. The book is entitled Remarkable Stories from Shropshire Churches and it concerns 40 people who have links of one sort or another with different churches in the county. There's a boy who sailed on The Mayflower and was thus one of the founding fathers of America, there's the woman who started the Save the Children Fund, there's the first man to swim the English Channel, there's the model for Shakespeare's Yorick, there's a 13th century Machiavelli, there's the man who first dreamed of the modern Olympics and many more. I have no idea when this is due to appear.
OTHER WRITING
I have another new venture definitely going ahead with a new publishing house called Bankhouse Books. The book is entitled Remarkable Stories from Shropshire Churches and it concerns 40 people who have links of one sort or another with different churches in the county. There's a boy who sailed on The Mayflower and was thus one of the founding fathers of America, there's the woman who started the Save the Children Fund, there's the first man to swim the English Channel, there's the model for Shakespeare's Yorick, there's a 13th century Machiavelli, there's the man who first dreamed of the modern Olympics and many more. I have no idea when this is due to appear.
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