Life and love in Walworth

Karen Neville

novel

Annie B Brown has lived in the village of Church Crookham for 25 years but grew up somewhere very different in South East London, the inspiration for her debut novel Long Live Love

Fond memories of growing up in South East London in the 1960s, the vibrant fashions and ground breaking music are at the heart of Annie B Brown’s debut novel.

A baby boomer growing up Walworth, Annie confesses to loving all things Sixties which provided the inspiration for her family drama Long Live Love.

“It was a time when communities pulled together, neighbours and locals looking out for each other,” she reminisces. “The famous East Lane market where the majority gathered at weekends, carried the excitement, colour and drama of a circus. Walworth was a great place to be.”

She earned the writing bug from a primary school together “who enthralled us youngsters with stories she’d written”. Annie wrote regularly as a teenager and had her first two short stories accepted at age 22. She wrote fiction for The Brownie and The Girl Guide magazines for many years after as well as stories and poems for local newspapers, winning a few competitions.

Long Live Love is a family drama set in 1969 in Walworth following the lives of a fractured family, in particular, two of the sisters who are forced to live apart.

Annie explains: “It is a tale of resilience, danger, and the enduring strength of familial bonds and community. It explores whether love can mend the deep wounds etched into the sisters’ hearts. And whether the family, as a whole, find the strength to reunite in the face of adversity.”

Based around the East Lane market, sub plots involve the lives of typical local characters. “It is a story written during a time when you truly were a part of the community. People supported each other”, enthuses Annie. “The market is the hub of the community and where most of the local gather at the weekends. The traders would flirt with the smiling cross armed ladies while the men raised their eyes to the sky, having heard the good humoured banter many times before. Humour is the essence of life and us Londoners have it in abundance.”

Walworth is famed for being the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin with local pub, The Thomas A Beckett, famous for its upstairs boxing club, where pugilists Sir Henry Cooper, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Frazier sparred. The Kray twins apparently sparred there too!

Annie recalls one particular memory concerning the great train robbery in 1963. “My father and elder sister were making their way home along Great Dover Street, on the outskirts of Walworth. As they drew close to the public transport telephone box, my sister spotted two bugling sacks inside. With no one close by she was desperate to investigate, but my father advised against it. The newscaster that evening spoke about monies recovered from the robbery. Those two filled sacks found in the telephone box contained £50,000!”

The book is available from Amazon & Waterstones online.


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Battle for Monte Natale book

Liz Nicholls

novel

Beaconsfield author John Strafford’s new book Battle for Monte Natale was inspired by the story of his father Ernest after finding his cross at the Field of Remembrance

One evening in November 2011, John was walking through the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey when he saw a section containing the crosses of his father’s infantry regiment, the York & Lancaster Regiment.

There were, of course, lots of crosses and it was dark so he couldn’t read any names. However he had his camera with him and used the flashlight and zoom. The very first cross he saw was that of his father, Ernest Strafford.

“I was so shocked that tears streamed down my face.” says John, who set himself the challenge of finding out what happened to his father who was killed in action in January 1944. John was only 16 months old at the time and his mother had remarried in 1949. “Fortunately my stepfather treated me as though I was his own son, so I was very happy. I never really felt any desire to talk about my father.”

John was born in Sheffield, but has lived in Bucks for 50 years with his wife Caroline, raising three sons who all went to Thorpe House School and then Dr Challoner’s. John attended Hunters Bar primary and then the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover, which was founded in 1803 for the sons of soldiers. He worked as an accountant for several major companies before starting his own manufacturing business which he sold in 2013.

John and Caroline have played an active part in the local community, including as members of the Gerrards Cross Memorial Centre. John served for Beaconsfield Constituency Conservative Association, of which he is still a member, and he awarded the Cleisthenes Award in 2023 for promoting democracy within the Conservative Party.

The Battle for Monte Natale was part of the bloodiest battle of the Italian Campaign. As part of his decade-long research, John made several visits to the battlefield as well as the National Army Museum, Imperial War Museum and National Archives in Kew to research military records and reports. In 2022 he took part in a television interview shown at the Roman Amphitheatre in Minturno.

“War is terrible and my greatest wish is that conflicts cease and the people of the world learn to live in peace,” adds John. As well as starring at literary festivals this year, John hopes to visit Germany to meet a man who gave him helpful information for the book.

John’s hardback book, containing more than 100 photos and maps, is out now, published by Pen & Sword. His other books include Our Fight for Democracy – A History of Democracy in the United Kingdom.


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Peppard writer’s inspirational love letter

Round & About

novel

Peppard writer Glenn Bryant has just published his first novel available now in The Bell Bookshop in Henley and Fourbears Books in Caversham

What would you do to survive if you were suddenly arrested in your own home? That’s the question posed by local author Glenn Bryant in his debut novel, Darkness Does Not Come At Once.

Four years ago he began writing inspired by a lifelong interest in the Holocaust and the question: how could ordinary people do something, in the worst sense beyond imagination, so extraordinary? Glenn learnt specifically how people with disabilities were targeted and says he knew he always wanted to write about that in this psychological thriller set on the edge of Berlin, 85 years ago.

He explains: “That deeper societal question was my motivation. My inspiration was Juliet, my wife, who has a spinal cord injury and a level of paralysis. We’re so happy together. My novel, at its heart, is simply a love letter to her.”

A “love letter” which on many occasions Juliet was unaware Glenn was writing as he would take to his keyboard first thing in the morning while she was still sleeping.

“Setting out to write a book is a commitment. It’s unavoidable. But… You can commit to it on your terms. I wrote three days a week: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the days I wasn’t working,” he says. “I was most interested in how many words I had written. I was aiming for 1,000 a day. From my document history, I can see I was writing a touch over 10,000 words a month. And in eight months, I had reached 85,000 words and the end of a first draft. Then the hard work starts.”

But having always wanted to write since he was a teenager he wasn’t deterred by rejections and knock backs from publishers and literary agents despite constantly asking himself “is your work ever going to see the light of day?”

Glenn adds: “You’re really on your own, and you feel it, so you have to be your own life coach and therapist too, and pick yourself up from the lows. But once I was through those moments, I pretty much loved the whole experience. I’m at the beginning of my journey as an author.”

And while he has plans for no more at this stage and is 100 per cent focused on this first work, he concedes: “I’m sure I will one day. You just need that gem of an idea to lodge in your head and I will be away, starting all over again with a blank Word document.”

Join Glenn for a relaxed Q&A style talk about the book on Friday 7th June, 7pm-8pm at Fourbears Books, 20 Prospect Street, Caversham. Enjoy free entry and complimentary wine when you get there.

Heart felt with author Teri Terry

Liz Nicholls

novel

Teri, whose psychological thriller The Patient will be published by Bookouture on 13th February, tells us about her local life & loves

Teri is no stranger to writing, having previously published 14 young adult novels. She was inspired to write The Patient after following the tragic news of the parents of a young boy who went to court to stop his life support being withdrawn.

This and other previous cases got her thinking about what life and death mean, both medically and legally, and how it might differ from how most lay people would view this…

“When I was a law student I was fascinated at the difference between ethics and a lay person’s gut reaction of what is right or wrong,” she says. “An action could be considered ethical even if many would consider it wrong; conversely, it could be unethical even if most might think it was right.”

Teri, who has worked as a scientist, a lawyer and an optician; managed her own business, worked for a charity and in schools and libraries, has been writing full-time for a dozen years, mostly thrillers for teens, starting with the Slated trilogy. She was born in France, going to school in Canada, and living in Australia before settling in south Bucks which has been home for almost 20 years and where she lives now with her husband and six-year-old cockapoo Scooby. “Bucks is very much home,” adds Teri. “We got engaged at the top of Coombe Hill… Then I slipped over in the mud. Scooby is much loved and full of life and mischief. Having her made such a huge difference to our lives during lockdown. Tommy the trainer is one of her very favourite people, now located at Pegasus Unique Pets in Whitchurch [pegasuspets.store].

“I love that we have easy access to canal and countryside walks here, but are still being able to get to London in under an hour: the best of both worlds! I love Black Goo in Tring and Thame is a favourite haunt. Also, The Bell in Aston Clinton and Rumseys in Wendover for getting together with other writers, eating chocolatey treats and having a good natter. I’m also very pleased there is a new independent bookshop in Tring, Our Bookshop.”

The Patient is a psychological thriller about a heart transplant recipient who becomes obsessed with her donor. You can order or pre-order before that date on Amazon.

Hungerford heroine: historical novelist Iris Lloyd

Round & About

novel

Iris Lloyd explains more about her “now or never” approach to writing, having written her first novel at the age of 70 and just published her latest.

My Lady Marian, my eighth novel, has just been published. It tells the story of Marian who arrives at the court of Henry VIII at the age of 15 and later becomes lady-in-waiting to Katharine of Aragon then Anne Boleyn.

I have been writing all my life – stories, poems, pantomimes, as village correspondent for the Newbury Weekly News – but had never tackled a novel. When I reached the age of 70, I thought: “Now or never!”

At that time, I lived in Beedon, north of Newbury, and was helping to excavate a site on the downs that had been active all through the Roman occupation. Our “finds” included a thousand bronze and two gold coins, Samian pottery, jewellery, a Medusa medallion and a rare fish brooch (a sign of Christian activity), as well as the skeletons of a dog, one adult and more than 50 babies.

Inspired by this site, my first five novels tell the story of Bron, who was born and brought up there, who travels to Rome in pursuit of her young Roman officer lover, then returns home to a new village being built where Beedon now stands.

My sixth novel, Flash Black, takes place during the reign of Elizabeth I. There followed Hunterswick Green, a contemporary novel set in a new housing complex that is advertised as perfect but hides a secret.

  Signed copies of all my books are available through my website www.irislloyd.co.uk or by emailing [email protected] by adding £2, postage to the price, or they can be obtained through bookshops.

Big society: Surrey novelist

Round & About

novel

Shamley Green pilot-turned-author Heather Lanfermeijer explains more about how her experiences of motherhood led her to write her debut novel The Society Game.

My daughter suffered the onset of the “terrible twos” before she was one. Although, perhaps a better way of putting it is: I suffered my daughter’s terrible twos earlier than I expected.

To remedy this my mother suggested I take up knitting, my friends suggested I take up drinking. I don’t have the patience for knitting and I’m too vain to drink the amount of calorific wine needed to drown out tantrums. Instead I vented my frustration on paper on the odd occasion when my beloved was quiet.

Writing down my bugbears about exploding dirty nappies, supermarket screaming and continual sterilising of baby bottles was cathartic and helped me face another day and another tantrum. These baby annoyances merged into writing about other daily grievances; dog walkers’ inability to pick up their dog’s mess, the bollards my car keeps backing into (I swear they weren’t there when I got in the car). From there, my frustrations morphed into things that really irritate me about aspects of our society and thus began my book.

I used to live in an area along the A3 full of million-pound mock-Georgian houses with new supercars on display in the driveways. To my jealous eye, the women who lived here enjoyed blissful, carefree days with only the odd First World problem to bother them, such as: “the cleaner has dusted my pictures and left them wonky and I now have to straighten them before I go out!” (genuine conversation!). Over the years, I noticed a pattern emerging: between the ages of 30 and 40 these beautiful ladies seemed to me to spend their days in coffee shops with their baby (always) asleep in the pram. From 40 to 50 there were no children only coffee but they looked strangely younger than their previous 30-something self. By 50, the Botox and fillers left these women with a mannequin face I could no longer relate to. And sadly, coffee is replaced with Prosecco from wine bars as they fight to find husband number two (or three).

Possibly a cruel summation but it occurred to me that our society favours a beautiful façade over a happy marriage. So, the social defect explored in Olivia, is about our generation’s obsession with how we look as we are led to believe success is not just about keeping up with the Joneses but now keeping up with the Kardashians.

Olivia is based around true stories collected over the years from friends’ tales, stranger tales and pub tales. The book is moulded into one story based on my perception of our society. For those intrigued then maybe check out my website www.thesocietygame.com. I write a weekly blog including excerpts from this and future books where I invite debate as I assume some may disagree with my view but that’s OK; art is just another person’s perspective on life and Olivia is my art.

  The Society Game, by H. Lanfermeijer, is out now.