Writing

Thanks to the lockdown, I have few distractions and so everything is going to plan regarding the publication of my three e-books.

1). 1969. A Year in a Life.

This is what I call a memoir-based novella, and it has actually been available for a year, but it could not be distributed because the cover page did not meet certain technical specifications. But now I have had all three cover pages done by graphic designer and illustrator Paco Quirosa and I trust that will solve the problem. I am, anyway, publishing a slightly revised version of this book. Most of these minor revisions are concerned with trying to better integrate the ongoing political stories into the narration. They are the aftermath of the Prague Spring, the struggle of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, and the American war in Vietnam.

 [Towards the end of 1969 news came out of the My Lai massacre committed the year before by US troops in Vietnam.]

2). Blinded by Love or Science

This is a collection of poems that I have written over a number of years. The Science in the title refers mainly to the science of astronomy. This is where science comes closest to poetry. It is the science of contemplation and awe. Love refers to the Love of All Things, from the intimate love between two people, via love of the or an environment, to love that ignites political indignation. And Blinded refers to the way that both love and science can affect our peception of the world, and how blindness can help to see through to essential truths that may be obscured by the sight of the physical world.

3). Andrewes with an Extra ‘E’

It was 1964, I was working in the City of London,  I had come back from lunch, the second lunch session,from 1 till 2. That session could be extended a bit, because you didn’t have to relieve anybody (who would be waiting anxiously for his or her lunch break). Those sessions could end in boozy sessions in the local and often did. There wasn’t much to do in the afternoon in the couple of hours or so you had left to fill out titl knocking off time. 

And so it was one afternoon on returning to the office, I lazily decided to look up in the London telephone book how many Andreweses there were with the extra ‘e’, like me. There were five. And there among them: Andrewes, F.N. (vet) - and an address in East Finchley. This casual discovery set me off on an investigation into my ancestry that I hope to have drawn a line under with the publication of this this lightweight probe into my my family tree.

All three works will be available to purchase from 2 June 2020. You will be hearing from me shortly about how.