Taking An Interest by D J Taylor

Introduction from A Distant Cry Stories from East Anglia Chosen by Peter Tolhurst, 2002,  Black Dog Books Norwich: D J Taylor was born and educated firstly in Norwich to which he and his family have recently returned. His firs, partly autobiographical, novel English Settlement (1996) won the the Grinzane Cavour Award. He has also written several studies of modern British fiction and a biography of Thackery. His most recent novel The Comedy Man (2001) is set partly in Great Yarmouth. Several short stories with an East Anglian setting, including Taking An Interest, appeared in his collection After Bathing At Baxter's (1997) while Passage Migrants....was one of the series 'Tales from East Anglia' broadcast last year on BBC Radio 3. Taylor's centenary biography of George Orwell will be published in 2003. 


First Published 1999

The Maze by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Introduction from A Distant Cry Stories from East Anglia Chosen by Peter Tolhurst, 2002,  Black Dog Books Norwich: In 1922 Warner travelled to East Chaldon in Dorset to meet the writer T F Powys whose allegorical tales she much admired. As a result she decided to rent a cottage in the village and a highly influential friendship grew out of that first meeting. Through her contact with David Garnett at Chatto and Windus Warner arranged for Powys' stories to be published. Four years later, following the appearance of her first novel Lolly Willows, Warner went to stay with Garnett at Hilton Hall on the edge of the Fens. There she was much taken with the pillar on the green erected to the memory of William Sparrow in the centre of a turf maze cut by him to celebrate the Restoration of 1660. The maze, in which Mr Slumber is, by her own admission, an affectionate portrait of Garnett, appeared in the The Salutation (1932), Warner's collection of decidly Powysian short stories.   First Published 1932

Mr Campion's Fox by Mike Ripley

As a favour to the Danish ambassador, Albert Campion and his son Rupert begin to shadow Soho photographer Francis Tate, without realizing they too are being shadowed. It seems that young Mr Tate, clearly enamoured with the ambassador's teenage daughter, is involved in more than landscape photography. When a body is found "orribly murdered" (as Lugg would say) on the Suffolk coast and the  ambassador's daughter disappears without trace, various parties - including the Campion clan -descend on the isolated town of Gapton and the hunt begins for a killer, a smuggler, a spy and a missing girl. Campion is older, wiser and perhaps vulnerable, though just as sharp as ever; and with Lady Amanda at his side and Lugg looking over his shoulder, who would bet against him?   First Published 2015 by Severn House Publishers Limited.