From Innocence to Arrogance

From Innocence to Arrogance is the most authentic British crime novel on the market today. This book takes the reader on the journey in first person as Cyrus Johnson lives his day-to-day life.

Every 15-year-old is somewhat the same, what makes Cyrus so different is his mentality and decision-making. Read this! It will open your eyes to a world you never knew existed right under your nose. The information to live this life is here, but after having it, would you still want to?

From Where I Stand

When two or more people find sufficient in common to call themselves ‘us’, they will strengthen their togetherness by looking for a ‘them’ to dislike.

Indarjit’s law

It’s fashionable to talk of ‘hate crime’ as if a small minority of people are infected with a virus of hate against those they see as different. It is not like that. Prejudice and fear of difference affects us all. 

I learnt about my Sikh religion almost as an outsider looking in to find surprising teachings on justice, compassion and a need to stand up for others.

Discrimination in employment in the ’60s, normal and lawful at the time, led to my turning down a well-paid job to go to India, where writing under the pen name of Victor Pendry, I became a local hero to the Sikh community suffering majority persecution. This standing up to injustice through writing, speaking and importantly, humour, is the story of this book.

You cannot choose your battlefield

 God does that for you

 But you can plant a standard

Where  a standard never flew.

Nathalia Crane

Fucking Pterodactyl

Margareta du Plessis the Republican Madam Prime Minister does “Madam Prime Minister’s Questions” as she takes a few swipes at her pterodactyl Democrat opposite by calling him a “fucking pterodactyl” over his sex allegations of her gay brother’s doings with a European male whore on live Gay TV the night before, by tossing her half-drunk glass of wine right at him where it just missed him by inches as it pulverized upon the olive-green work-bench right beside him. Madam Prime Minister also had a go at her pterodactyl counterpart over the acquisition of androids which work without any pay and don’t require any food, that are set to replace general biological office workers who she’s commissioned to immediately work in an Andromeda exotic jewellery mining colony for jewels to be made and sold intergalactically. So, the pterodactyl calls for immediate strikes in the House of Commons, London, circa 30,050 AD. in an alternate sci-fi reality.

Fugly & Friends

Frederick Fugly said that no creature should ever get lost the way Harry Mouse did. Bursting with curiosity to find out what happened, Big Bugs goes off in search of answers deep into the forest. Along the way, she meets various forest creatures who all think they know what happened to Harry Mouse. But has she been tricked? After all, Frederick Fugly is the only one who can truly know what happened to Harry Mouse.

Gas Meter Knees

“It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realised pressing 50 pence pieces into Plasticine sheets and filling the impressions with water, freezing overnight and quickly using the ice coins in the electric meter slots wasn’t normal behaviour.” From raiding the bins of London fashion labels, to being asked to bury dead bodies in a flyover, being beaten unconscious twice in one day, to regularly driving my inebriated maths teacher back to school for a fee, finding my boss dead in a mysterious suicide and dragging a teetering motorcyclist to safety on a busy A3 flyover to avoid certain death, the weekly war with the bailiffs doggedly trying to repossess my TV, and finally an attempt to emulate Evel Knievel by jumping a pickup truck in Wimbledon Stadium. I learned the hard way that nobody was going to save me except myself – all this before the age of 16. A real-life rags-to-relative-affluence story which takes us from humble SW17 origins to the bustling streets of Singapore and Tokyo. The story is as diverse and delightfully absurd as it gets. If I hadn’t lived every moment, I wouldn’t believe it either.

Gathering Moss

An atmospheric, mainly biographical story set in the 1930s-1950s, of a British Naval Officer's determination to foil the enemy's wartime dive bombing of our fleet. Hundreds of lives were saved by his suggested adaptation of the big, anti-aircraft barrage balloons which were flown above cities and other land based targets, to be specially tailored for the defence of shipping as well.

Combined with this moving story is a colourful account of family life at that time, and it was not very long after the ending of the Second World War that Commander "Basher" Boorman began to find himself involved in certain minor skirmishes on his own home front.

Commander's daughters do not always obey orders, even if their father has the appropriate rank, and this teenager certainly had a mind of her own. Determined to pursue a career not approved by her father, Basher's daughter found herself to be out-manoeuvred. But battles sometimes resolve themselves in unexpected ways, as was eventually the way with this particular one.

'Gathering Moss' is a fast moving, evocative story which covers a variety of events, backgrounds, and human emotions.

Generation Care

Drawing on his experience of over 50 years of health care service the author has imagined how life would improve if mankind moved towards a more caring and loving society. While mankind has greatly benefited from the goods and services which have been delivered by capitalist societies, the excesses of capitalism and the selfishness which leads to inequity have ruined many lives. Love calls us to a caring capitalism in which competition delivers high standards while governance protects the poor. Everyone’s basic needs are met by this society. The model of inspection against governance standards has been used with great success by the Care Quality Commission to improve care and to protect vulnerable patients in the UK National Health Service. With the potential disasters of a viral pandemic followed by the environmental threat of global warming, capitalists are being called to work primarily for care and not primarily for money. It is interesting that this same message is contained in the teachings of Jesus who founded our culture.

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.

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 Saves the Rainforest

When George, the orangutan, discovers his rainforest is being destroyed, he is very, very angry. With encouragement from many of the smaller animals whose homes have been destroyed, George starts on an adventure to save the rainforest with the help of Grace, the clouded leopard, Sleepy, the mystical binturong, General Aman, and many other animals at the Wildlife Centre--animal power versus man and machine.

Ghost Tours of Hertfordshire and Essex

Ghosts are ubiquitous! This guide has 62 tours, which incorporate over 280 towns and villages, and more than 800 sites. Directions are given in each tour to enable the investigator to find the sites. Map references have been included using Ordnance Survey Maps, together with the map numbers, to enable the investigator to find the haunted sites. The purpose of the guide is to enable the enthusiast to seek and observe. There are notes of interest and history notes as the counties are awash with fascinating stories and legends. 

So decide which tour you are going to tackle first. You may wish to meet the phantom army at Thundridge Church ruins, the screaming woman in Water Lane, Bishop's Stortford, the Witchfinder General, Mathew Hopkins at Manningtree, or maybe the ghostly monks carrying a coffin at Belchamp Walter.

Ghostly Visions

A journey through the strange visions and visitations of characters: historical, contemporary and futuristic. The brief tales are written for easy reading and reach from ancient times to the imagined worlds of the future. Rather than horror stories, these experiences are unfolded as the strange and intriguing encounters of people who are visited by an unexpected presence, or who travel through unfamiliar landscapes both physical and mental. Many tales are set within historical worlds that may be remote but have some familiar features and some significance for our own times. The imagination of those engaged in these experiences are often stretched as they discover truths about themselves and their surroundings. Young people come of age as they witness unfamiliar occurrences and world-weary personalities find fresh meanings in the scenarios that they move through. Many of the stories explore the relevance of ancient myths to the truths that the characters find on their voyages of self-discovery.