Colin Reed – författare

In the middle of the 19th century an unsettled Europe was being drained of emigrants dreaming of a new and better life in the New World. The packet ship Ocean Monarch was carrying nearly 400 of these passengers and crew on its return voyage to Boston from Liverpool on August 24th 1848. While still in sight of the North Wales coast, the ship caught fire which swept through its timbers in record time, giving many no chance of escape. In a time capsule of the politics of the age, its rescue operation brought together all levels of society ranging from the poor who had to bring their own straw on board to sleep on to those at the top of the social scale as aristocrats.

Taken largely from contemporary newspapers, this is a biography of Music Hall star Cissie (Cecilia) Loftus, whose career also spanned the serious stage, movies and radio, first successfully bursting onto the sage at the young age of 17. Much loved in her time but now mostly a forgotten name, she showed her versatility through published stories, music and lyrics and sketches. As well as a musician, dancer and stand-up comedian, she was mostly known, respected and loved for her skills in impersonation of any manner and any voice. She was never far from controversy which was ever a part of an independent and energetic life in the public glare, and her career runs parallel with the Music Hall itself from the heights of its 1890's success, to the reduction in its popularity by the production and development of film.The Music Hall itself is a history of attitudes and collective expression written, in effect, by the audiences and reflected by the performers on the stage, each giving the other what they wanted. Within the attitudes of the day in the western world, Cissie's life, along with her fellow performers took in the confusion and unfairness of race and sexuality, the effects of a colonial heritage in the self-consciousness of national identity, a suffragette sympathy with its celebrated march through London, a compassion shown to poverty and distress during a devastating world war and her own struggle with identity and illness. After a celebrated drugs bust in 1922 from which she emerged triumphantly from her addiction, she settled into a less hectic career and a quieter role which included the celluloid of Hollywood as it evolved from the stage, Music Hall and vaudeville.

When Ercolina, a music teacher, finds out that her husband Nigel has been cheating on her, she needs to regain his attentions, and hopes she has a found a way of doing so when he asks her to compose his own personal music for the industrial awards ceremony, in which he is being presented for his design of a techo-suit. The suit can be programmed with remedial properties and when worn, can influence a variety of emotional states. On the day, Ercolina makes sure it is ready for him on time and is proud of her musical masterpiece to accompany it. It seems to be the right time and place to remind him of the loyalty she has always given him, and which he has recently chosen to ignore.

Cheryl has come through a particularly difficult divorce, and now is left only with the practical difficulties of bringing up her children alone. She is quietly drinking a cup of coffee in the security of her home, when the worst of her fears is presented to her, right before her eyes. Any possibility of rescue from the situation would have to come from a highly unexpected source.

Dave wins the regular, monthly drinking contest in the pub for the first time, and is then considered among the elite of the hardened drinkers. Barely able to stand up, he meets Iggy, a former winner of the contest, and they go on to a military fancy dress party where there is no 'last orders'. Eventually Dave finds his way home but, as he arrives in the bedroom,he is confused to learn that his partner Belinda's seduction is not aimed at him, and he has to drastically reconsider his status.

The proud black and white speckled hen was different to all the other hens in the farmyard. She had black and white feathers,and all the others hens had brown ones. She considered that being different meant being better and, when an opportunity arose where she thought she could demonstrate that fact,she took it without pausing for a second thought. The error of her decision however,is obvious to all the other occupants of the farmyard except herself,and the consequences are very final.

Cedric couldn't be blamed for enjoying his personal success and he also couldn't be blamed for taking his eye off reality in the indulgence of this success.

When Chas goes to see Santa Claus to ask him why he has taken back all the presents from every house worldwide, he is surprised to find that he is offered the dream job of Ingerland national football team manager, in answer to his drunken, postal request.He returns home to a hero's welcome as all the presents are miraculously returned, but learns to his dismay, that the internal politics of human survival never change.

A routine ride home on the underground metro provided Wilfred Truebody with both dreams and nightmares. He was a different man when he got off at his usual stop, and expecting to get home for tea.

The social worlds represented by Dog Merdo and the Crumpsall-Dandys are in direct contrast, the one to the other. Such is the great rift valley of contempt between the two, that they can only ever meet on equal terms in death. The Crumpsall-Dandys lead a rich and privileged life, while Dog Merdo belongs to the proletarian level of society of poverty and unemployment. Uncle Arthur had died and his body has been kept in deep freeze for some years. Dog Merdo's life is always close to death because there is little hope for him, or anyone at his social level. Some mild reference to sexuailty.

Breezy McCready's habitual weekly visit to the launderette on the high street did not go to plan for the first time ever. However, from out of the depths of despair, a new opportunity arose to make him ten times the man that, for a lifetime, he never thought he ever could be.

A straightforward anecdote about the imminent closure of a care home for the elderly, which had been founded by the indomitable Myra Thorndyke. Old age and its frequent accompanying states of dementia and diminishing ability of judgement, is both sad and humorous at the same time. Myra's difficult, early adulthood, which she had had the strength of character to overcome, was her insurance for the old age of those in her care, and the innocence of her final affair was the buoyancy which would keep her dreams afloat.

Bram Trimp and his son, Bradley set off on an expedition to a remote part of a forested and mountainous terrain to bring back pictures and video of the Man o' the Woods, a fabled creature, who had for centuries, eluded hard evidence of the proof of its existence.Their sophisticated network of cables in the campsite that they had set up to the lure the beast had limited success, but there was another predator in the woods, which fed rapaciously upon the innocent dreams of others.

Two lifelong friends, Phoebe-Rose and Imogen, find themselves in bed together, but not through sexual need or physical attraction. Their names have been changed to hide their true identities. Unlike their recent and unexpected guest, in the bed and breakfast accommodation that they ran together and whose identity change is a little more drastic.

Jade Marie lives on a farm with her mother and father. Tom, the farmhand, is the only other, almost permanent, person who is usually around. She is in her last year at school, and the future doesn't hold much hope for her. Relationships have become increasingly strained, and her father, especially, had begun to have little to do with her. She loves the outdoors where she can escape into the fields, with only the animals as her companions, and spends much time in her own company. Falling deeper into herself, she steadily increases her isolation from others.At school, she doesn't fare much better, as the difficulties of her home life are affecting her ability to foster good friendships. Her natural aloofness is the subject of much ridicule by the Tuesday Boys, the miscreants of the class, but she is considered with curiosity and compassion by a single admirer, whose attentions she feels unable to return.While walking back from the village with her mother, one, early Spring evening, she finds a doll that had been carelessly abandoned in a builders' skip. Retrieving it, she takes it home, and is convinced that it was instrumental in saving both her own and her mother's life by the river bank, as a brief, but vicious rainstorm took part of the precarious path away.The doll, which she calls Skipdoll, becomes her best friend and, from that day, events which take place in her life, and which are often threatening, could be explained by the presence of the doll, as all events or their solutions, could be traced back to it.In the moment of perhaps her deepest despair, the reasons for the strained relationships at home are revealed to her, leaving her with the potential to turn her life around to a happy one, if she has the skills to engage with others

Herman, having recently been made redundant, is being fussily groomed by his wife as she perfects the state of his suit he is obliged to wear for a job interview that morning. He is used to wearing overalls for work, and being generally casual or careless in his ordinary, everyday, dress sense.To walk the streets like a tailor's dummy is completely uncharacteristic of him, but he has to do it because he needs to work. He would have preferred not to exist today. It was like going on a dangerous recce into enemy lines, away from the security of his home in which he can find his true self expression. Like a glass of water to a man wandering through a desert, the music in his head is his only means of survival.

Nathan is recently divorced and his life has taken a downturn. He is not a desperate man however,philosophically taking anything that is thrown at him, and is forever curious about the human condition. In his short time at the museum, where he can marvel at the extent of past, human survival, he is able to consider the drastic decisions that the human individual will make, in its choice, to escape its present condition and circumstance, and ensure its own, personal heritage .

Dez is a social alien living on the outside of convention, and has no care for the world about him. Silas lives rigidly within the system and regards it his duty to give assistance to those who have fallen foul of convention, generally through no fault of their own. They only ever meet once, when Dez mugs and robs a stranger, Silas. Circumstance however can be influential in creating an entirely different person out of the briefest of moments and both, in their very different lives, become subject to their differing circumstances.

The title is based on the classic line from Aristophanes, Lysistrata. In the needs of relationship and partnership, Ottilia is confident about what she wants, but Hayley and her husband Trent, in their own particular ways, are not. Hayley and Trent have grown apart and both have been easily convinced by different agents on how to change things, though the consequences of that change have not been added to the equation.

A study tracing the relationships between missionaries and African Church workers in Kenya in the years 1850-1900, as missionaries increasingly adopted imperial assumptions of Western superiority.It tells the story of the first Anglican clergy in Kenya, their wives and colleagues; their rescue from slavery, their education in India and their subsequent work in East Africa. It demonstrates their contribution to the rapid growth of the Church and of indigenous Christian communities. Yet later missionaries were not willing to accord to the Africans the position they had a right to expect. The book recounts their protest and the development of a Church order.Similar events in West Africa have been documented, but this is the first time such a pattern in East Africa has been outlined.