Gertie and Amos

Imagine being born into a harsh, 19th century institutional environment where the slightest deviation from the rules means cruel punishment. Yet Gertie’s indomitable spirit overcomes all obstacles as she applies to the Queen for help. Once out in the male-dominated world of politics and social unrest, her spirit unleashes her determination to create change.

George and the Briton

Mark is a young British sailor who is deployed to Antioch in Syria as part of a delegation to brief the Emperor Diocletian on the liberation of Britain from a usurper. By coincidence, he meets the Tribune Constantine who introduces him to a fellow Roman Army officer, George. Mark can write in Latin so George appoints him as his clerk.

Mark is tasked to keep an account of the operations of the ‘special forces’ unit that George commands on the front line of the Eastern Roman Empire. He also keeps his own private diary and is required to provide Constantine, who is a member of Diocletian’s personal staff, with periodic accounts of operations.

As George achieves some extraordinary results and Diocletian manages to stabilise the Roman Empire following a generation of chaos and uncertainty, a new problem arises. Diocletian’s deputy, Caesar Galerius, starts seeing Christianity as a subversive religion. This becomes a challenge for George, his family, and some members of his unit.

This is the tale of Constantine and George, told through the eyes of a young soldier’s diary.

George (The Teenage Years)

This is an introduction of George to the masses. He is the representative of a whole lost generation (lost to the government and the British public) who have recently been in the news as the revelation of who they are comes out.

George tells the story of an 11-year-old Windrush boy who arrived in England from the island of Jamaica in 1965. The story is narrated in third-person and speaks of the boy’s first experience of being in a cold country, the absence of an introduction to his new family, the difficulties he faces as a new boy in a new school, the struggles to find his place, his resistance in conforming to stereotypical expectations and his fights to maintain the self-pride and independence he learnt from his early years in Jamaica.

As George progresses through the school and struggles to assimilate, he moves from being the outsider to become a cultural educator and a facilitator of his peers and brings together the different groups within his association. However, he has difficulty reconciling his family and church life with his secular associates. Through the boy’s eyes, the narrator depicts how it was at that time for the West Indian immigrant community in London and the group of unnoticed children whom they brought from the islands, how they mixed and associated with each other, their embryonic family and the indigenous population.

From Worthy Down to Diego Suarez

From the moment when Douglas, a torpedo bomber pilot, became a double agent, he was marked for extinction by both sides. In the early years of World War II, Naval Intelligence saw him as dangerously unreliable while the GRU discovered that during the Spanish Civil War he supported POUM, anathema to Joseph Stalin who believed they were allies of Trotsky. After he had been awarded the DSC, attempts to murder him began in earnest for the third time. The hope was to kill him in action. Who would strike the first blow?

Finger of Suspicion

This novel depicts events that happened to officers from Strathclyde Police covering the periods between 1990 and 2003. The names have been changed in most circumstances to protect those involved but the detail within the stories reflect events that happened and written by me in my own words as an interpretation of what I recall.

Being a police officer during this time was rewarding and I met many lovely people whilst I worked there and still remain friends with many of them.

Policing during that era was difficult and drugs were a major scourge in the deprived areas in the north of Glasgow and many families lost loved ones through overdose or other serious drug related illnesses. The criminal gangs operated in these areas ruled by fear with many drug dealers only doing it to repay a debt.

The stories provide an insight into a behind the scenes look at how investigations are managed and the characters involved in running them. It is a sad depiction of life at the front end of policing, dealing with death and misery. More alarmingly, it will discuss the lack of support provided by senior officers towards other lower level colleagues.

The author used every power of strength and determination to set the record straight with some of the events and was helped by a few other like-minded friends. It is a story of belief in one another and colleagues involved in these incidents all looked out for one another—which didn’t always happen but I am glad we did!

Fermented Spirits

Stevie Monroe and John Beverage have been friends since childhood. They are now settled in the Gorbals, a Glasgow slum. Stevie is elated when his French wife, Camile, becomes pregnant with their one and only son. John Beverage and his wife, Caroline, already have two sons. The last thing they need is yet another mouth to feed.

It’s 1902, the working classes are suffering from extreme poverty and exploitation. Men line the docks in droves on a daily basis looking for work. Even when you have a trade, as Stevie and John do, work is extremely dangerous. Drunkenness is a perennial cause of casual cruelty. Boot-legging is rife. John sets up a family distillery for some extra cash to survive, but turns more and more towards the drink himself, dishing out back-handers to his family.

Stevie, meanwhile, lives his life as a shipbuilding sheet metal worker – a friend, a husband, a father, and a man with a deviance that has to be kept secret at all costs. Deviant sexual practices are abhorred, resulting in life imprisonment, suicide and murder. For homosexual men, especially those from the working classes, Britain is in the dark ages. Navigating this world leads Stevie to a life wrought with worry, confusion, murder and love.

Excalibur's Gold

A couple's search through the historical wonders of the Welsh countryside for clues to the greatest discovery of all times: King Arthur himself.

Join them as their search takes them from the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct near Llangollen to the Devil's Bridge via the shore line St. Govan's Chapel in Pembrokeshire, all because of a clue found in an old oil painting of the Britannia Bridge on Anglesey.

Erpingham

In an age when kings were ordained by God and the powerful waded through Europe up to their knees in blood, a wide-eyed 13-year-old boy first went to war. Over time he learned to look death in the face and, with grimace, draw his sword.

He was afraid of neither man nor God.

Surviving the Black Death, disastrous battles and campaigns in foreign lands and the machinations of kings, bishops and nobles, Sir Thomas Erpingham fought across a continent, defended the interests of England and became the unsung hero of Agincourt.

Endless Mission II

This is the second book to the plot Endless Mission, set in scenes, of a vivid World War I espionage drama.

Endless Mission

This is a fictional plot, set in scenes, of a vivid World War I espionage drama.

Daughter of Asher

“They tried siege ladders last night, but we were warned and shot naphtha flares into the city. The archers kneel behind the upper rampart and, as the Lady Im’Annas, our Seer, walks past, they rise up and shoot over her head. The Parthians are too superstitious to even try to shoot at her…” 

            The prophetess, Serah, daughter of Asher, arrives at the temple in AD 70, so does the Roman general, Pompey, but unlike him, she does not leave.

Damn Your Eyes...STOP!

A well-dressed young man makes his way into the Bald Faced Stag Inn, Putney Vale, London and books lodging for a few nights. With a wide smile and gracious pleasantries, he takes his key from the unsuspecting innkeeper. Little does the innkeeper know, this young man is about to embark on a journey that is, to say the least, defiant, unpleasant and often shocking. It soon becomes apparent that he’s not all that he appears to be.

Damn your eyes...Stop! Tells the story of Lewis Jeremiah Avershaw, a notorious highwayman who terrorised travellers in the late 18^th century. His short life was one of terror and violence that led to the inevitable conclusion...the gallows.