Read All About It!

I have recently completed a couple of books. For The Love of Cooper, Friar Minor is a collection of letters that Harold Cooper wrote to my old friend Ugo Vincent in the 1920s and 1930s. Although it is mostly a one-sided conversation, it is possible to follow a lot of what was happening and it was the descriptions of the prairie lands of the northern territories that fascinated me and made the book worth preparing.

I also had another reason. I had inherited the papers from Mr Vincent when he died in the 1980s but had not done a great deal with them. I had been a little concerned at the many references to 'boys' in both the Church and Scouting environments in which both men spent a lot of time. I had always thought highly of my friend Mr Vincent and believed him to be of good character. His preference for male company was understood and, of course, quite acceptable in present times but I could see that this was most definitely not always the case. I was worried that I may find stories of deeds that I would be annoyed to read. Mr Vincent had had a tremendous influence on me in my later teens and over the years from the late 60s but it was his intelligence, lively conversation, challenges to authority that I liked. There was never the slightest hint of anything untoward through the time I knew him. Clearly, though, this may not always have been so.

I shall not say any more here but there are some surprises in this book.

The other is a revision of my own story up to Spring 1985. At this time I had been on a rollercoaster of life, fortune and emotions and really the whole of who and what I was to become in future was in the balance. It is difficult to write about how stupid one can be and it can be a tough read for me these days. Some of my behaviour was not good and I did feel that I needed to cut out some unnecessarily explicit detail and some rambling and repetition. 

I do mean to write the sequel and tie up a number of loose ends but I fear I simply cannot yet do that. I do think that someone could make a great film out of all that happened and one of the reasons for the revision was  so that I felt a little less nervous allowing others to read it, one colleague having good connections with a producer specialising in this sort of tale. Now that would make a good ending!

Both books are available on Amazon at the links available via the images.

My previous publications are also available and are shown below.

Finally, I have a series of Little Chick stories for children and I will summarise these soon in a separate post.