Silver Sound 9 September 2016: Corporate Skulduggery

Today’s guest was crime thriller writer A A Abbott, known as Helen. Helen writes pacy thrillers inspired by the corporate world in which she works as an accountant. Her books are set in Birmingham, where she lived for many years before moving to Bristol, and also shift to more exotic locations such as Amsterdam, Paris and Shanghai. She has published four novels: The Bride’s Trail and its sequel, the recently published The Vodka Trail; After the Interview; and Up in Smoke. She has also written numerous short stories, some with a supernatural twist – and she’s even giving away a collection of short stories to anyone who signs up for her newsletter on her website

Helen is also a member of the Bristol Fiction Writers Group, who have published a collection of horror stories, and have just published a crime story collection. You can hear Helen and other members of the group reading from their stories in an event that is part of the Bristol Festival of Literature on 28 October 2016, between 3 and 5pm in Foyles in Cabot Circus. This is a free event and there’s no need to book. For further information see the Bristol Festival of Literature website. http://unputdownable.org/

Find out more about A A Abbott and her books on her website.

Come and meet the Silver Sound team!

Members of the Silver Sound team will be at the Celebrating Age Festival at Bristol MShed on 18 September 2016. Look for the Silver Sound stand, as well as enjoying a range of activities such as free health checks and information about where to go for advice and support. The event is free and there's no need to book. For more information visit the Celebrating Age Festival website.

You can listen to today's show here

http://bcfmradio.com/silversound

Silver Sound is broadcast by BCfm between 10 am and mid day on Thursdays and Fridays. I’ll be back on the show on 7 October 2016 with another fabulous guest!

Comments

Dickens and Chickens

On 17 April 1860, in fields near Farnborough, Charles Dickens joined an audience amongst whom were the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, as well as a number of MPs and clergymen, to watch the American John Carmel Heenan and England’s Tom Sayers (the Brighton Titch) beat one another blind and bloody in a bare-knuckle fight that lasted nearly two and a half hours. The fight ended in a draw when Aldershot police stormed the ring, forcing the fighters and their illustrious spectators to flee the scene. It was the brutality of this match that signalled an end to the bare-knuckle era and prompted the development of the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules. Dickens’s interest in pugilism was of long standing. In 1848 Dombey and Son , which had been published in serial form over the preceding two years, came out in book form. One of many of his novels that draws on the world of the prize fighter, it introduces the unforgettable Mr Toots, a would-be man about town, an...

The Bristol Boys: The Bare Knuckle Champions and The Hatchet Inn

The Hatchet Inn on Frogmore Street in Bristol is all that remains of a row of seventeenth-century timbered houses dating back to 1606 – making it one of the city’s oldest pubs. It was substantially altered in the 1960s, and these days it stands on a traffic island. But at one time it boasted extensive grounds – and amongst the facilities on offer was a bare-knuckle boxing ring. Plaque at The Hatchet Inn, Bristol The pub’s connection with Bristol’s boxing heroes is commemorated in a plaque illustrating five of Bristol’s champions – one of whom, Hen Pearce, features in Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery. Hen Pearce (Detail) Bristol born Hen Pearce, The Game Chicken (1777 – 1809), a former butcher’s boy, became champion of England in 1805. He was a hero inside and outside the ring. In 1807 he climbed onto the roof of a building in Thomas Street, Bristol to rescue a servant girl from a fire. Always a popular figure, this courageous act inspired many eulogies in pr...

'We will have a fire': arson during eighteenth-century enclosures

Join our Winter Solstice Blog Hop! Thirty writers throw light on a dazzling range of topics . Follow the links at the end of this article to be enlightened and brightened by our blogs... “Inclosure came and trampled on the grave Of labours rights and left the poor a slave And memorys pride ere want to wealth did bow Is both the shadow and the substance now.” John Clare, The Mores On 1 May 1794, the writer Hester (Thrale) Piozzi of Streatham Park recorded in her diary that the furze on the common had been set on fire in protest at the enclosure of land “which really & of just Right belonged to the poor of the Parish”. Yet even while she acknowledged that the protesters had justice on their side, she criticised them for not “going to Law like wise fellows” and concluded: “So senseless are Le Peuple , & so unfitted to be souverain”. The senseless poor of Streatham were not unique. During the eighteenth centu...

Search This Blog