In The House on Hunter Street, the novel’s main protagonist, Cari Maddox, describes the state of the campaign for women’s votes in 1911 like this: So many suffrage societies in Liverpool now, she couldn’t count them anymore. Forty different groups? Fifty? And most of them wouldn’t have spat on the others if they’d seen them on fire. Fine, … [Read more...] about 1911 and the Liverpool Suffrage Campaigners
Hunter Street – the Historical Background
Hunter Street is now no more than a busy dual carriageway, running behind Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery and the Museum. The road connects the bottom of Islington with the end of Byrom Street. It carries an endless stream of vehicles heading in one direction, upwards, for the city’s eastern suburbs. To the M62 motorway, the cathedrals and South … [Read more...] about Hunter Street – the Historical Background
The Stanbrook Story
You’ll know the story already, I guess. Heroic. The tramp steamer Stanbrook. And its legendary Cardiff skipper, Archie Dickson. The tragic closing days of the Spanish Civil War. 28th March 1939 and a final desperate group of Republican refugees carried to Oran, North Africa. To comparative safety. Out of rebel General Franco’s … [Read more...] about The Stanbrook Story
May Day in Pocklington
An extract from A Betrayal of Heroes. Mid-1944, an entire company of Spanish Republicans, now fighting the Free French, find themselves in Pocklington, Yorkshire, waiting to the posted to Normandy. It was May Day and the men of La Nueve had insisted on celebrating their socialism in style. They didn’t quite understand the Maypole or the Morris … [Read more...] about May Day in Pocklington
Reynolds News and the Spanish Civil War
My three novels set during or in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War feature fictional journalist Jack Telford. But I needed a real-life newspaper for which he could report. And I chose the Sunday weekly Reynolds News. It had been founded as Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper in 1850 by radical journalist William MacArthur Reynolds. In … [Read more...] about Reynolds News and the Spanish Civil War