Silver Sound 27 January 2017: Where’s My Money?

Today’s guest was Bristol writer Mike Manson. Mike has written a number of non-fiction books about Bristol, including Riot! The Bristol Bridge Massacre of 1793; Bristol Beyond the Bridge: The Turbulent Story of Redcliffe, Temple and St Thomas from the Middle Ages to Today, and most recently Vice and Virtue: Discovering the Story of Old Market, Bristol.

It was while researching Bristol’s history that Mike realised he wanted to take the stories further, and that to do so he needed to write fiction. His first novel, Where’s My Money, is set around Bristol’s Nelson Street dole office in the 1970s. It was one of the books selected for the BBC television programme The Books That Made Britain.

Mike’s second novel is Rules of the Road, a quirky coming of age tale set in 1975 about two young men’s journey across Europe to Greece looking for love and adventure. The book looks back to the days before Rough Guides, and to research it Mike and his wife travelled from Montpelier railway station in Bristol to Albania – without a map or guide book.

Bristol is very different to what it was when Mike first came here in the 1970s and on the show we talked about some of those changes. Mike also told us about the smallest literary festival in the world – ShedFest. ShedFest has been running for a couple of years now and takes place in the shed in Mike’s garden. A ShedFest anthology has been published, and now there are plans to move the festival out to a local restaurant and invite members of the public along.

You can find out more about Mike and his books at

www.pastandpresentpress.co.uk

www.wheresmymoney.org.uk

http://www.tangentbooks.co.uk/wheres-my-money.html

http://www.tangentbooks.co.uk/rules-of-the-road-mike-manson.html

http://www.rulesoftheroad.co.uk/

You can listen to the show here (10 am to 11 am)

http://bcfmradio.com/silversound

Silver Sound is broadcast by BCfm 93.2 fm between 10 am and mid day on Thursdays and Fridays. I’ll be back on the show on 24 February 2017 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