Monologues and Duologues for Young Actors

This collection of scenes offers drama teachers a wide range of topics to explore through characterisation of the moment. There are scenes based on the historical past, these could be linked to cross-curricular activities. Those set in the present seek to draw young actors into a setting with which they can identify and emotionally explore. The author believes that young actors often wish to explore comedy. With this in mind, many of the scenes reflect comedic values. Some of these fun situations hold deeper resonances which the drama teacher would be able to explore with the actor. Each scene contains many different levels for the actor to identify with and emotionally develop. As the words are brought to life, the actor should imagine that they relate to a given set of circumstances; each scene is directly linked to the human situation. A young actor's motto should be: "I will live the words I learn."

Monster in My Mind

Prepare to be captivated by Monster in My Mind, an enthralling journey into the world of a tormented child. Alison’s harrowing truth unfolds within the pages, exposing the depths of her troubled upbringing. Step into her shoes as she navigates a harsh reality, locked away within her own mind. Through resilience and determination, she eventually finds the strength to break free from her confines and soar to new heights. This poignant tale will leave you spellbound, shedding light on the indomitable spirit that can emerge from even the darkest of circumstances.

Moonlight and Roses

The year is 1934 and Albert, a singer, meets Dorothy, a pianist, because another pianist has broken his thumb. As children they had grown up during the First World War and had known the Depression, but they were young and life was full of music. They married in 1936 and their daughter, Barbara, was born in 1937. Life looked good but Albert was an Army reservist and was called up at the outbreak of the Second World War. His letters to Dorothy from France form the basis of this book. Fortunately, he survived Dunkirk and was posted to Stars in Battledress, entertaining the troops for the duration of the war.

The book shows the privations on the Home Front and the morale of the British people despite the dangers and hardships of war. Life was no easier after the war, but with the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the New Look, colour came back into everyone's life. The Festival of Britain in 1951 was the icing on the cake. And with the National Health Service being created and new homes being built, the dark days were past and life could only get better.

More in Hope Than Glory

Football is a game that is loved throughout the world at every level. It’s a game that is all-encompassing whether it be the enjoyment of a kick about in the local park or the magnificent spectacle of a World Cup final. Well, this is a football story that lies somewhere between those two extremes, and to be honest more towards the bottom end of the spectrum.

This is a light-hearted true story of a young lad who used to walk four miles to the ground of the team he loved for every home game, and then grew up to become its chairman. It tells of the many highs and even more lows of running a lower league football club. It recounts the hopes and aspirations of every football supporter, followed by the inevitable kick-in-the-stomach feeling when it all falls down. It’s about love and passion for football in a proud northern town.

More in Hope Than Glory is the story of how what was once regarded as one of the most unsuccessful league football teams suddenly and dramatically became a little less unsuccessful.

More Memoirs of a Midwife

Carol Duncombe worked as a midwife for a long time, mostly in the community but had hospital experience too. She delivered over 2000 babies throughout her time as a midwife. This is her second book. The stories here are true and show the variety of families that a midwife may meet during her career.

More Than Music

This is the third part of a joint autobiographical trilogy based on the letters and diaries of two professional singers Christopher Davies and Barbara Kendall-Davies. It also relates to their young son, Giles and his blossoming career as a singer.

There is a good deal of music, of course but also many unexpected and divergent paths as well, including a major Hollywood movie. 

Mosquitoes in Skyros

A spiritual retreat – or so this man thought – was something you go on to embrace your connection with life and (hopefully) learn a bit more about yourself. If things go well, you might end up looking to the future with added confidence. However, when the realisation dawns that you have been semi-consciously searching for “the one” for the last eleven years, and that the very essence and substance of true love risks materialising during the retreat… I mean, what is a man to do?

A light-hearted search for greater well-being on a Greek island combines with “a nice holiday” to engender somewhat more sharing than anticipated. The parallel narratives of the retreat workshops and a budding relationship begin to over-flow – one nourishing the other, to the point that a rare and very real love seems almost fated.

Written with great honesty and sensitivity and (yet!) through a male perspective, poignant memories from childhood are pieced together with reflections on relationships in general to bring such focus on the natural laws affecting us all, that a sense of underlying good purpose in every relationship starts to emerge.

With evocative descriptions of Greek cuisine and culture as the backcloth, threads of spiritual mystique interweave with a most-passionate romance. The words of wisdom that emerge organically as the story unfolds may be left to wash over, or be investigated using the cross-references to appendices that support self-development alongside the story; but in any event, there is always the sun and the feta!

Mosul Dreaming: An Australian Psychologist in Iraq

In 2017 Diane Hanna was offered a role to provide psychological services to international surgical team, 15km from the front line during the last battle of Mosul, Iraq. The mission had provided her with a restored sense of meaning and purpose, which compelled her to return and continue working in the largest humanitarian crisis since the second world war.

In temperatures above 48 degrees celsius, she forged ahead, recruiting members of her mental health team from the camps of those displaced during the conflict. She established programs and activities, for thousands of women and children who were wounded and traumatised by ISIS. On her day off, she often sat in bed and painted those whom she met from Mosul, whilst unable to leave the guesthouse due to the ongoing dangers outside.

When funding to her mission was cut suddenly, Diane made the decision to stay in Iraq which would change her life forever. Alone, and with a life-threatening condition she was now facing a corrupt medical system, and an increasingly volatile environment. Trapped in one of them most hostile countries in the world, she would need to muster all her strength, knowledge and skills, to negotiate her way out.

Her story will astonish and inspire you. It will make you reassess what it means to serve as a humanitarian worker, and remind you that whatever happens, you must keep fighting and never give up.

Mother’s Love

Mother’s Love is a series of essays about social issues. I say that my readers know my essays are good for them like broccoli, but the jokes throughout are sort of the cream cheese that makes the essays tasty. I started writing them in 2014 and then picked up where I left off in 2021. Some of the best essays were written while travelling to Brooklyn in New York in 2021. The other more notable essays were written after long beach walks where I would empty my mind out so when I started writing I would only have a heading in mind and then let the rest flow directly out of my subconscious. I often say that my life is sort of a circus that my essays are based on but the Dalai Lama says circuses are fun. 

Mr Movie Man

Films. Cinemas. Movies.  

They capture our imagination throughout our lives for whatever reason. Everyone has a different memory to associate with a film title or cinema name. Be it your very first experience at a young age, your first date and that kiss and cuddle in the back row or perhaps even a film that scared the life out of you!  

This book brings back to life a distant memory to each and every one for their own reason. Be it your favourite movie star or that musical’s song that wouldn’t leave your head for weeks, that journey to a far distant galaxy or just being chased by a giant man-eating shark.  

Cinema is the only place to capture all these adventures.

Mundane Insurance

Manufacturing industries are a common knowledge as are the likes of the motor car, television, foodstuffs and electrical goods that exist around us every day and are forcefully advertised. Banking too but it is only true to a lesser degree regarding insurance because if canvasing the average person in the street about insurance they would think only about their life insurance, health insurance, motor cover, house and contents, pet plan insurance and so on. Put like that, it is all very wearisome and therefore hardly a subject worth writing about, or is it? That was certainly the author’s impression of insurance even up to the point of moving into the financial sector from manufacturing industry.

Pursuing the subject a step further, hazarding a guess, if those very same people were quizzed regarding the types of people they imagined are employed in insurance they would probably describe their insurance broker or simply a voice at an insurance call centre. This account therefore will, in all probability, dispel the notion that all insurance dealings are routine and in the main, predictable as did an international group of young insurance delegates at a Middle East seminar, many of whom were totally unaware that the insurance industry’s activities were so diverse.

Munich Why?

This is a fascinating, cold-case review of the 1938 Munich agreement. There were five major players: Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Czechoslovakia. For the Czechs it was a disaster. In 1939, the Germans marched into Prague. The Czechs were to lose their independence for some 50 years. In Britain, Chamberlain was the self-appointed spokesman for the Czechs. He was simply found wanting because he never appeared to have the slightest understanding of Hitler’s dishonesty. The French were led by corrupt and incompetent politicians who had treaty obligations to the Czechs which they were determined, at all costs, to avoid being required to honour. The Germans were the villains of the act. Hitler was determined to smash the Czechs and “to remove the tribes of Bohemia and Moravia into reservations in Siberia and Wolhynia (a marshy part of Poland).” 

“Ethnic cleansing” had not then entered the English language. Russian foreign policy was famously described by Churchill as “a riddle, wrapped up in a mystery, inside an enigma.”