All posts by Sarah
Blackbird Flying
Cate Collinson
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On being a stroke survivor Shortly before the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, Emma goes to work as normal. Walking to the toilet, she closes the door. After a moment, she realizes that her right side is numb. She wakes three days later to find herself in a bed at University College Hospital. After two months at U.C.H., Emma is moved to Charing Cross Hospital. She has been told by the Almoner that there is a good chance she will get herself well again but that’s not how she feels about it. ‘I’m twiddling my thumbs in here,’ she says. She wants to go home. Meanwhile, Mark is fearful of his feelings. He knows things will never be the same but he agrees to take her home. When they get there, he tells her what he’s been doing to the house and shows her the shower down on the ground floor and the steps with a banister to the garden. Then he says suddenly, ‘I’m off.’ He doesn’t arrive home until midnight and the following morning he is gone. |
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| This is the story of Emma’s fight for recovery. She visits another hospital, King’s, where she has physiotherapy twice a week and speech classes for half-an-hour each week. Then she finds speech classes in Farringdon, twice a week. She goes to pottery and to singing at Southwark College. Later, she rides in the Stroke Association Bike Ride 1996 to mark almost ten years since she had her stroke. It’s a story of courage and hard work told with verve and feeling by new author Cate Collinson. | ||||||||||
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Reviews... |
The story of six generations of an English Romany family
Netta Cartwright
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Dating from the late 1800s, this memoir gives us a glimpse into the resilient lives of a Romany Gypsy family in one of the most transformative centuries in British history. We enter into their world of birth and death, childhood and schooling, courtship and marriage, their domestic and working life, and their love of life up close to nature in their tents and caravans. These stories of the old and current travelling traditions show how Zillah and her family have survived and thrived through times of war, violence, evictions and persecution. |
Available from YouCaxton £10.00 (+ £2 postage) Number of copies: Available from Amazon |
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Netta is a graduate of Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Keele and Birmingham Universities and is a school counselling trainer with thirty years school-teaching experience. She was Equal Opportunities Advisor for Staffordshire LEA where she promoted anti-racist projects in schools. She leads peer-support courses in the UK and abroad in primary and secondary schools in the public and private sector. Her publications include: "Towards Bully Free Schools: Interventions in Action" (OUP); “Peer Support Works: a Step by Step Guide to Long Term Success” (Network Continuum); and many articles in educational journals. Her work in schools has been featured on Channel 4 and BBC1. |
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Ryalla Duffy
The Travellers Times Book review
Read this excellent review in The Traveller's Times
Dr. Martin Kovats
Political Scientist, Former Advisor to the EU Commission on the EU Roma Integration Framework
“I enjoyed this book very much. It provides such an insightful account of Zillah’s life as a Gypsy from an age of horse powered freedom to council sites. Zillah’s story illustrates the central importance of kinship as the world changes around her and her own life is transformed. For her it is caring for the chavvies, parents, siblings and husband that is most important. I also liked the use of photos, themselves treasured family mementos, to illustrate her memories. The text is honest using direct quotes to provide authenticity.”
Pat Sanderson, Poet.
“Netta Cartwright invited Zillah in and got to know her and her family in a relationship that has spanned thirty years. This remarkable book is the result. She has told Zillah’s story with compassion and humour. It is a fascinating piece of social history.”
Thomas Acton OBE, Emeritus Professor of Romani Studies, University of Greenwich.
“An unaffected and deeply felt depiction of the complex intensity of English Romani family life over the past one hundred years. It is a rare book about a Romani woman by a woman and valuable for that.”
Dr Liz Doherty, Professor Emerita, Sheffield Hallam University
“This is an important piece of social history. The evocative narrative weaves Zillah’s current life together with memories and stories from the past, and a world of freedom, colour, hardship and fierce loyalty is opened up to the reader.”
Roy Samson, Writer.
“Zillah’s story is of a life lived more intensely than most of us experience. The Many Lives allows us glimpses into a world that is close to ours yet intriguingly strange, seeming more natural but rapidly passing. Netta Cartwright tells the story with warm commitment and love.”
Healing Hearts and Apple Tarts
Annie Beaumont
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and a totally demented dalmatian When Hetti returns home to discover that the locks have been changed she soon realises that her boyfriend, Daniel has absconded with one hundred-thousand pounds of trust fund money left to her by her parents. Hetti isn’t the sort to let him get away with it and sets about trying to find him and recover her money. She turns to her gay godfather, Oscar, for emotional support. Oscar’s go-to comfort food and remedy for all ills is homemade apple tart. Hetti finds a housesitting job and moves to Wisteria Cottage, in the Norfolk countryside. What she doesn’t realise is that the job involves taking responsibility for Tosca, a totally demented adolescent Dalmatian. Hetti has no experience of dogs, especially crazy ones. Nathan runs a smallholding in Norfolk, close to Wisteria Cottage. He has been nursing a broken heart following a tragedy five years earlier. Will Hetti find Daniel and retrieve her money? And will Nathan’s heart ever heal? Can Hetti and Nathan learn to trust again? Annie Beaumont takes us through a rollercoaster of emotions, dramas and comedic situations before we find the answers to these questions. |
Paperback edition (UK only) £9.99 (+ £2.50 postage) Number of copies: Available from Amazon |
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Amazon Reader
Healing Hearts and Apple Tarts is set in Wymondham, Norfolk, and is Annie Beaumont’s second novel.
Her first novel, Daughters of Hamilton Hall is also set in Wymondham and has received five-star reviews.
It’s Not about Shakespeare – Aspects of ordinary life in Stratford-upon-Avon, 1775-1915
Val Horton
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It's Not about Shakespeare Aspects of ordinary life in Stratford-upon-Avon, 1775-1915 Val Horton A great deal is known about Stratford-on-Avon’s remarkable Elizabethan history but very little of its more recent past. Beginning in 1775 with an Act of Inclosure through to 1914 and the First World War, this book attempts to redress that imbalance. It is a concise and compelling read, presenting the reader with a rare glimpse of local life during the 140 years concerned. Being a period of remarkable change, it brought great improvement to the town, but there was often a price to be paid. Education, healthcare, suffrage, slavery and housing are just a few of the areas explored. Within its chapters, local dignitaries, benevolent families, unfortunate paupers and brave men and women all have a voice. When George Cope encountered Constable Keeley during the 1832 elections, and feelings were running high, he wanted to ‘split his skull open’. Later, in 1912, Albert Danks was told by a local district judge he had ‘done a foolish thing’ in accepting a stolen duck, and let off. With such well-chosen words, many gleaned from archived copies of the local paper, the reader is presented with an intriguing insight into life in this famous small town. |
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Reviews... Robert Booth, Social Affairs Correspondent for The Guardian Bristling with the chaotic energy of riots, strikes and bacchanalia, this elegant, humane and subtly radical social history of Stratford reveals a place unknown to the millions of visitors who come looking only for the trace of Shakespeare. Val Horton is a witty and diligent guide as she charts her home town’s other life: a stuttering journey to modernity from the squalor of the poor house via the struggles for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. Suddenly, Shakespeare’s town seems so much more. Anne Langley, Family & Community Historical Research Society This is an unusual book...The research started out as a history of the author’s Edwardian house, but by including the owners of the land on which the house was built, it’s developed into a record of everyday life in Stratford (1775-1915). The chapters alternate between those about the history of the house and those of more general interest. Thus there are chapters about the workhouse, education, medical provision, women’s suffrage, the Great War and so on. Anyone writing the history of a house- or indeed their family- might like to consider copying this enterprising approach to publishing their findings. Dr Sarah Richardson, History department, University of Warwick An impressively researched and fascinating insight into the changing character of a town in transition: Stratford-on-Avon. The lost voices of ordinary men and women from the town echo through the pages, providing a unique interpretation of the town. Valerie Horton has created a brilliant and inspiring social history based on comprehensive and meticulous research. Michael G. Mattis, retired editor, Davis, California Val Horton’s long residence in Stratford-Upon-Avon and her devotion to the history of its people have given her a clear vision of this special place. More than a story told between neighbors over the back fence, her book gives the bigger picture - of inclosure, slavery, conscription, insurrection, politics, women’s rights, law and order, education, medical care, housing for the poor – but from a local perspective. A fascinating look at an amazing town. Cyril Bennis, former mayor of Stratford, now the town’s swan keeper Communities are a collection of individuals, connected by streets, and this is the logical starting point for this engrossing social history. We are given a fascinating glimpse into the plans and personal aspirations of the various owners of Mayfield Avenue, and how these involved and were influenced by the social institutions of their time in the town at large. Meticulously researched and well told, it brings to life a non-Shakespearean, but no less engrossing, period of Stratford-upon-Avon life. |
