Showing results by author "Ray Burston" in All Categories

June 1976 – beer is 32p a pint, Abba are topping the charts, and Britain is on the cusp of what will turn out to be its most glorious summer on record. As the temperature soars, a working-class boy from the English Midlands and a vivacious exchange student from the United States arrive on a holiday island, determined to seek out good times, adventure and romance. What neither youngster can foresee is that before that long, hot summer has drawn to a close their carefree weeks of fun in the sun will be overtaken by the discovery of dark secrets from the past.

Britain in the late 1970s was dubbed the ‘sick man of Europe’; a country engulfed by social, economic, and industrial malaise; a country teetering on the precipice of political revolution. What the country got instead was a musical revolution – an explosion of brash new bands whose loud, fast-paced anthems articulated the boredom and frustration of its disenchanted youth. Having quit the music business in disillusionment, David ‘Bomber’ Harris is nowadays a devoted family man. However, this brilliant, instinctive drummer is persuaded to pick up his sticks anew and make his own ...

By the summer of 1969 the ‘Swinging Sixties’ has barely touched Sneyd End in the English Midlands. Instead, while Neil Armstrong is walking on the Moon and The Beatles are recording ‘Abbey Road’, the good folk of this grimy, industrial town are trying to make sense of a series of unexplained disappearances amongst the pupils of the local high school. One man declares he has the answer: Brian Danks is an eccentric zoologist who has made a name for himself on account of his dogged campaign to save the town’s railway from closure. It’s been an obsession that has won him few friends...

"We've been quite crafty: we tried finding out who won that massive lottery pay-out the other week, but the Editor got cold feet..." Jill chuckled to herself, thereby not noticing an eye pop open before hastily closing again as she turned to address him once more, sighing "... I say good luck to the guy, whoever he is. I just wish he'd share out a few of his millions with me!" "M-m-m-more lemonade?" Paul burbled self-consciously, offering her a swig of the next best thing. ******* Take one humble railway booking clerk. Take one £22 million "rollover" Lottery prize. Put the two together and...

In 1989 the people of Eastern Europe rose up and finally put an end to over forty years of subservience to their communist masters? However, the aftermath of those revolutions often brought to light tales of unimaginable poverty, degradation and suffering – heart-breaking tales that led thousands of people in Britain to feel sufficiently moved by what they saw on their television screens to do more than just give a little money to salve their consciences, often organising and manning up convoys of huge great trucks to head across the Continent bearing food, clothing and medicines. ...

As a newly arrived undergraduate from overseas, Victoria Kamau is eager to experience all the exciting things that university life in Britain has to offer. And what could be more agreeable than to be doing so in the company of her new English best friend. However, as her year in the country unfolds, she encounters dark and disturbing sides to the succession of male admirers who also befriend her – revelations that turn disillusionment with men into a consuming anger. So when samples of a deadly virus go missing from the campus’s research laboratory, the attractive young student suddenly...

Britain in the early 1970s was ‘the land that time forgot’ – a country in the grip of strikes, power cuts, inflation, unemployment, and terrorism; a country that often felt like a very bleak place indeed. However, exploding onto the scene to defy the gloom, the extraordinary fusion of flamboyant music and outrageous fashion called ‘glam rock’ offers nineteen-year-old Steve Shelton an opportunity to break free from family and religion and pursue an abiding ambition: to be the greatest rock guitarist of all time. Within a few short years that ambition will propel him from strumming ...

France 1954: two officers – one a dashing professional soldier and aristocrat, and one a low-born reservist – celebrate the rekindling of a curious friendship that was once fashioned in the crucible of war. Seven years later, and that friendship has unravelled amidst the bitterness and recrimination of another brutal war that is now tearing France apart. This is the story of that friendship; a story where moments of heroism and idealism alternate with moments when raw and unthinking passion sweeps all before it; a story of love and betrayal, and of a friendship that has all along been ...

During the darkest days of the Second World War, Eileen Kimberley – a pretty teenage girl from the backstreets of Birmingham – makes her bid to escape a claustrophobic home life by enlisting in Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. What follows proves to be not just the adventure of a lifetime, playing her part in her country’s desperate war in the skies over Germany; but also a painful voyage of self-discovery in which a tragic past impels a steely determination to seek out that special someone with whom this gifted young woman can share her crazy dreams.

Summer 1914: the high noon of Germany's colonial presence in the Far East. For the men of the Kaiser's navy the idyllic charm of life on the China station is soon to be abruptly shattered by war in Europe. Their commanding officer, the formidable Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, will then be compelled to lead his cruiser squadron across hostile oceans in a desperate attempt to evade pursuing Allied warships and rejoin the fleet back in German waters. Some of the men he must lead on this challenging mission are seasoned seamen; others are mere boy recruits sent out from the Fatherland. Yet ...

Ambitious and successful, Wes Smith is in the prime of life – even if the pursuit of a lucrative, globe-trotting career has come at the expense of a failed marriage and a string of relationships that have gone nowhere. Therefore, the promise of a new start in another new country proves a challenge too tempting to pass up.It’s a new start that abruptly goes awry. Finding himself the sole survivor from an airliner that is mysteriously lost at sea, he is suddenly confronted with a very different and unexpected challenge: how to survive on a small, uninhabited island in the middle of ...

Tom Simmons has everything: he is tall; he is charming; he is self-assured; and he is strikingly handsome – the kind of guy who will always command the attention of the opposite sex. Ben Hingley is none of these things. Gullible, obsessive, and emotionally illiterate, this unprepossessing little man seems destined to live out his days a despised and misunderstood loner. Yet these two contrasting characters do share something in common – the gathering indulgence of three very different women: a raffish, thrill-seeking author; a crestfallen politician; and a kindly churchgoer who bears ...

During the 1980s an unsung ‘Black Country’ town in the industrial West Midlands was a world removed from Britain’s renowned ‘corridors of power’ at Westminster, corridors that were overshadowed throughout by the ascendancy of one of the most formidable and controversial prime ministers of modern times. Even so, this seeming backwater becomes the battleground for two ambitious young friends as they embark on a thirteen year quest to become its Member of Parliament – a contest that will rage instead through the ‘corridors of power’ of its local government and business ...

In ‘The Making of the Member’ we followed the story of two young friends from an unsung ‘Black Country’ town in the industrial West Midlands as they pursued an arduous thirteen year quest to become its Member of Parliament. By the time Tony Blair and New Labour had completed their epic journey from the political wilderness to Downing Street, both men were also completing the first stage of their own political journeys. Ahead of them there will now lie further years of struggle and disappointment, of danger and intrigue, of triumph and tragedy, as they lay claim to their place at the...