In this collection of stories, Bill Naughton portrays a selection of characters, including truck drivers, Irish itinerants and lamp lighters, in his inimitable pithy style. While each tale can be enjoyed on its own, together they provide a wonderful picture of post-war and a bygone era. With descriptions so graphic the characters could be based on real people, the lives, loves, hopes and disappointments of Naughton's characters will keep you gripped till the last.
A journey along one of Britain's oldest roads, from Dover to Anglesey, in search of the hidden history that makes us who we are today. Long ago a path was created by the passage of feet tramping through endless forests. Gradually that path became a track, and the track became a road. It connected the White Cliffs of Dover to the Druid groves of the Welsh island of Anglesey, across a land that was first called Albion then Britain, Mercia and eventually England and Wales. Armies from Rome arrived and straightened this 444 kilometres of meandering track, which in the Dark Ages gained the name Watling Street. Today, this ancient road goes by many different names: the A2, the A5 and the M6 Toll. It is a palimpsest that is always being rewritten. Watling Street is a road of witches and ghosts, of queens and highwaymen, of history and myth, of Chaucer, Dickens and James Bond. Along this route Boudicca met her end, the Battle of Bosworth changed royal history, Bletchley Park code breakers cracked Nazi transmissions and Capability Brown remodelled the English landscape. The myriad people who use this road every day might think it unremarkable, but, as John Higgs shows, it hides its secrets in plain sight. Watling Street is not just the story of a route across our island, but an acutely observed, unexpected exploration of Britain and who we are today, told with wit and flair, and an unerring eye for the curious and surprising.
When Alfie meets a strange girls at a wedding party, they have little in common, yet each feels a need for the other and they embark on a curious love affair.
Centres on the sensitive Arthur and his new bride forced by economic circumstances to live with his good-hearted but rough-tongued father. The lack of privacy is so inhibiting that Arthur is unable to consummate the marriage, and gradually word gets around. But fortunately Arthur becomes so humiliated and enraged - he loses his inhibitions ...! Filmed as The Family Way with Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills.
The Goalkeeper's Revenge is comprised of stories of a Lancashire childhood: of football on the streets, fishing, fighting and school, of growing up and looking for work, and of characters such as Spit Nolan the champion trolley-rider, Sim Dalt the goalkeeper and Maggie Gregory the amazing reader.
Presents a history of England from the departure of Roman forces in 450 A.D. to the Norman invasion of 1066, focusing on the gold and silver artifacts of the Staffordshire Hoard found in 2009 to highlight the events and art of the period.
A historical science fiction novella set in 1st century Roman-occupied Britain, The Battle of Watling Street re-imagines the disappearance of the rebellious Iceni Queen Boudicca, and introduces the resourceful Celtic hero Dedo, attendant to the doomed warrior queen. Historians still dispute the end of Boudicca and the Iceni; did they escape to Wales or Ireland? Or did they stumble across a very different kind of deadly foreign occupier of their native lands?
Contient:Drunkard of the river / Michael Anthony. Hunters and Hunted / Jan Carew. The tallow pole / Barnabas J. Ramon-Fortune. Avillage tragedy / John Hearne. The red ball / Ismith Khan. Blackout / Roger Mais. The enemy ; The baker's story ; The raffle / V.S. Naipaul. The visitor / H. Orlando Patterson. The bitter choice / Clifford Sealy. My fathers before me / Karl Sealy. Cane is bitter ; A drink of water / Samuel Selvon. A shark fins / Enrique Serpa.
