1900-02, 1903-05, 1906-08, 1909-11, 1912-14, 1915-17,
1918-20, 1921-23, 1924-26, 1927-29, 1930-32, 1933-35, 1936-38, 1939-41,
1942-44, 1945-47, 1948-50, 1951-53, 1954-56, 1957-59, 1960, 1961-63, 1964-66,
1967-69, 1970-72, 1973-75, 1976-78, 1979-81, 1982-84, 1985-87, 1988-1990,
1991-93, 1994-96, 1997-99
1990
The Revolutionary's Daughter by Gwen Grant (1990)
Nominated for a Carnegie Medal, The Revolutionary’s Daughter
takes place at a time of the miners’ strike and tension is mounting. With local
families becoming divided, Violette’s own family are about to be ripped apart
by her deserting mother in this book for teenagers. Gwen Grant was born in
Worksop during the Second World War. Grant’s father was a miner and she grew up
in poverty. Despite this, her parents taught her that there was opportunity for
everyone
Don't worry, there won't be any tears from me. I've done all
the crying I'm going to do. You've been telling me to grow up. Well, now I
have. (from The Revolutionary’s Daughter)
In 1990 Alan Sillitoe was awarded an honorary degree from
Nottingham Trent University. Twenty years later (in 2010) there was a
commemoration event for the late writer at the Council House at which Gwen
Grant was a guest speaker.
1991
Cutting Edge by John Harvey (1991)
Insightful and compassionate with fine characterisation and
a solid plot, Cutting Edge is another highlight of John Harvey’s Resnick
series. There’s a slasher at large, brutally targeting hospital staff in inner
city Nottingham. With a knowledge of anatomy, the killer seems able to keep one
step ahead of the police, but Resnick is on the case.
There was a radio broadcast of Cutting Edge in 1996. The BBC
Radio 4 drama featured the voices of Tom Georgeson (as Resnick), Sean Baker,
Kate Eaton, Paul Bazeleyand and John Simm.
The blow sent him stumbling backwards, losing his footing as
he cannoned against the centre of the doors and pitched forward, thinking before
the belated sear of pain that he had been punched, not cut. (from Cutting Edge)
Former Nottingham Girls’ High School pupil Stella Rimington
joined Britain’s Security Service in 1969. In 1992 she was appointed Director
General of MI5 becoming the first woman to hold the post, and the first
Director General to have her name publicly announced on appointment. Following
her retirement in 1996, Rimington released her autobiography Open Secret, and
has since published ten thrillers featuring MI5 officer Liz Carlyle.
1992
Correspondence by Sue Thomas (1992)
Sue Thomas’ first novel, Correspondence, won The Heinemann
Fiction Award, an Encouragement Award from the European Science Fiction
Society, and it was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best
Science Fiction Novel. Described as a hypnotic mix of cyberpunk and magical
realism, it’s a chilling read which blurs the boundaries between virtual
reality and real life and examines the interconnectedness of fantasy, desire
and memory. Thomas became the first course leader of Nottingham Trent
University’s MA in Creative Writing, spending sixteen years here and writing a
book for creative writing teachers. She also founded Trace Online Writing
Centre; a unique, international creative community which used the internet to
develop innovative work.
The TV drama Heartbeat first hit the screens in 1992. It ran
for 18 series, over 350 hour-long episodes, to 2010. The setting, as well as
many of the characters and storylines, was taken from the Constable novels by
Nicholas Rhea, stories featuring an English policeman in a rural village in
North Yorkshire during the 1960s. The late Nicholas Rhea (aka Peter N Walker)
was a former President of Nottingham Writers’ Club. An author of over 130
books, he is best known for inspiring Heartbeat and wrote a lavishly
illustrated book about the popular TV show.
Another crime drama to appear on British television in 1992
was an adaptation of John Harvey’s first two Resnick novels. Running for two
series, Resnick starred Tom Wilkinson as the Polish Detective. The teleplays
were written by Harvey himself. Fellow Notts County fan William Ivory played
Det. Con. Mark Divine.
1993
Married Past Redemption by Stanley Middleton (1993)
Observational and shrewd, this is Stanley Middleton at his
best as he investigates the trials of contemporary marriage as experienced by
several professional couples and characters of different generations. At the
heart of this are the engaged David and Alison. His father (a TV celebrity) and
grandfather (a retired teacher) have their own problems, whilst an ex-lover of
Alison’s remains a destructive presence. It's a story of the hopes and fears of
the journey we call marriage, and of the nature of change.
On Vernon’s insistence, they had moved to a larger house,
part of the de Courcy Estate, but he, once a puritan, self-obsessed worker, had
now relaxed, begun to enjoy his fame or notoriety, made love to friends’ wives
if they were attractive enough, to bimbos, to colleagues, never seriously enough
to land him in trouble with anyone but his wife to whom he talked openly of his
liaisons. We heard him in a silence which he misjudged. (from Married Past
Redemption)
Broadway Cinema's Shots in the Dark crime festival welcomed
Herbert Lom, best known for his portrayal of the hapless inspector Dreyfus in
the Pink Panther films.
Also in this year, BBC One had a hit on their hands in the
form of Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover which was serialised as a mini-TV
series starting in the June. Joely Richardson, James Wilby and Sean Bean took
the leading roles, with Hetty Baynes playing Connie's sister Hilda. The show’s
director Ken Russell - who was married to Baynes at the time – played their
father.
1994
Sleepwalking by Julie Myerson (1994)
Sherwood born Julie Myerson grew up in and around
Nottingham, attending the Girls’ High School. Her first novel, Sleepwalking,
captures the inner thoughts of Susan, a woman stuck in a fledgling marriage
that’s already reached its end days - only she’s pregnant with her husband's
child. Confused and bereft after her father’s death, Susan is soon haunted by
visions of a boy, seduced by a painter, and faced with the prospect of
motherhood.
‘He’s gone, Susan’ – her voice cuts in and out, distorted by
the car phone – ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how you’re going to feel. It’s going
to be a shock after all this time.’ (from Sleepwalking)
After writing non-fiction Robert Harris turned his pen to
best-selling thrillers, beginning with the publication of Fatherland in 1992, a
detective story/alternate history set in Berlin. In 1994, Fatherland received a
film adaptation, made by HBO, and starring Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson,
the latter scooping a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Born in Nottingham,
Robert Harris has working class roots and spent his childhood living on a
council estate. “My father left school at 14, my mother at 13,” he explained.
“My father was clever, and well read. He took a newspaper, always watched the
news, discussed it all the time.” Robert’s writing ambition arose at an early
age, partly inspired by his visit to the local printing plant where his father
worked.
1995
American Tabloid by James Ellroy (1995)
Broadway’s crime festival Shots In The Dark spawned
Britain’s first major crime writing festival, Shots On The Page. Many top
authors were lured to Nottingham's festival including Sara Paretsky, James
Crumley and Evan Hunter (AKA Ed McBain). Shots… paved the way for Nottingham to
host the world’s premier crime festival - known as Bouchercon - in 1995, at
which the American crime writer James Ellroy was the International Guest of
Honour. Ellroy’s best novels include L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia and
American Tabloid.
The first of Ellroy’s Underworld USA Trilogy, American
Tabloid chronicles events surrounding three rogue law enforcement officers in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the novel, the officers become entangled in
the affairs of the FBI, the CIA, the mafia, and the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy.
Three shots tweaked his hatred. Four shots and up cut those
hatreds all the way loose. Three shots said, You project danger. Four shots or
more said, You’re ugly and you limp. (from American Tabloid)
Alan Sillitoe's autobiography Life Without Armour hit the
bookshelves in 1995. Covering Sillitoe’s formative years, we read of his time
in poverty and life in the army, up to, and including, the writing and
publication of his first books.
My father wielded the ultimate authority of the fist and the
boot, tempered – if that is the word – by a fussiness which was only another
form of self-indulgence, thus giving me an enduring disrespect for authority.
(from Life Without Armour)
1996
A Public Body by Raymond Flynn (1996)
Author Raymond Flynn was a Notts police officer. He worked
in the CID and headed up the fraud squad. Flynn used his 26 years of expertise
gained in the force when writing his crime novels. This second career came
after he retired and took a creative writing course. Following this endeavour
Flynn made the finals of a short story competition and won a prestigious prize,
leading to a contract with the publishers Hodder & Stoughton. A Public Body
is his second crime novel. It follows D.I. Graham and an eccentric group of
characters. Klondike Bill - aka Councillor William Lynch - is furious when he's
passed over for Mayor in favour of his detested second wife Muriel. When she's
found dead, and Klondike Bill is arrested for murder, D.I. Graham doubts all is
as it seems.
I knew him all right: I tried not to show it, but, deep
inside, I shuddered. William Lynch, Councillor William Lynch, if you wanted to
be precise, piss artist extraordinaire, alias Klondike Bill, more accurately
known in the Cell Block as Dirty Disgusting Bill. (from A Public Body)
In 1978 Nigel McCrery applied to join the Nottinghamshire
Constabulary because he “wanted to be middle class.” After working as a murder
squad detective in Nottingham, McCrery became a writer of fiction, non-fiction
and TV drama. His credits include Backup, Born and Bred, New Tricks, and Silent
Witness, first broadcast in 1996. The BBC crime drama focuses on a team of
forensic pathology experts as they investigate crimes. McCrery’s 2014 book,
entitled Silent Witness, looks at the history of forensic science over the last
two centuries. McCrery is a former pupil at George Spencer Academy in
Stapleford. The school recently named their Learning and Inclusion Centre after
him.
1997
Dark Forest by Frank Palmer (1997)
For over two decades Frank Palmer was the Daily Mirror’s man
in the East Midlands. Before that he had worked for the Daily Express where he
once wrote the front and back page leads on the same day. Palmer took early
retirement in the early ‘90s and wrote sixteen detective novels that were
popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Half of his books featured D.I. 'Jacko'
Jackson, and the other half, the Nottingham cop Phil 'Sweeney' Todd, introduced
in Dark Forest. Both Palmer’s leads boast humanity and humour. In Dark Forest,
a blast from a killer's shotgun has left 'Sweeney' Todd lame, disillusioned and
seeking a discharge from the force. After his hot-tempered lawyer offers Todd
employment on a missing person's case, he soon finds himself in the cut-throat world
of commercial drug manufacturing.
After Palmer’s death in 2007, the Nottingham branch of the
National Union of Journalists unveiled a memorial bench at Keyworth Cricket
Club, bearing his familiar greeting “Ey up sunshine”.
Written by Nottingham’s William Ivory, Common As Muck is a
BBC comedy drama about the lives of a crew of refuse collectors. Running for
two series it was nominated both times for a BAFTA, for Best Drama Series. The
ratings winner - first screened in 1994 - featured Lesley Sharp, Tim Healy,
Kathy Burke, Douglas Henshall and Saeed Jaffrey amongst the cast, as well as
Edward Woodward as the group’s leader. The rebellious gang must cope with the
realities of privatisation as they battle the suited bureaucrats at the council.
1998
Love Lessons by David Belbin (1998)
Rachel, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and her new English
teacher, twenty-three-year-old Mike, begin a love affair in which a fantasy
becomes a nightmare. They become too close during a school drama rehearsal of
Romeo and Juliet, and for never was a story of more woe than when love between
pupil and teacher doeth grow. Constantly in fear of being found out, the
star-crossed lovers make plans and promises they find difficult to keep. Set in
Nottingham, Love Lessons is a brave and thought-provoking YA novel, originally
written for adults.
For many years David Belbin was the programme leader of
Nottingham Trent University's Creative Writing MA, and he led the successful
bid for Nottingham to become a UNESCO City of Literature.
“He’s not paid to look at me the way he looked at me today,”
Kate retorted. “You know what else he did? As I was leaving, he winked at me.”
(from Love Lessons)
Published in 1998, Beyond the Wall is an anthology of prison
writing from 28 inmates from Nottingham Prison. The book of short stories and
poems was edited by David Swann, the then writer-in-residence at Perry Road’s
H.M.P. Nottingham. In 2010 Swann wrote a book based on his experiences in the
prison entitled The Privilege of Rain. He has been shortlisted for The Ted
Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.
1999
The Marsh King's Daughter by Elizabeth Chadwick (1999)
At the age of ten, Elizabeth Chadwick came to Nottingham.
That was back in 1967 and she has lived here ever since, writing award winning
and best-selling historical fiction since 1990. The Marsh King’s Daughter is
set during the time of King John and among his rebellious nobles is young
Nicholas de Caen. Captured and injured, Nicholas ends up at a nunnery where he
is nursed by Miriel of Wisbech, a woman itching to break free from her
restrictive lot. Shedding light on the blood-stained Middle Ages, Elizabeth
Chadwick’s novels mix fact and fiction, romance and religion, bringing history
to life.
It was a glorious May morning in the world at large – soft,
balmy and harmonious. At the home of Edward Weaver in Lincoln, however, a
violent storm was raging. (from The Marsh King’s Daughter)
Giles Croft became Artistic Director at the Nottingham
Playhouse in this year, a position he would hold for 18 years, increasing the
theatre’s in-house productions from 6 to 14 per year, and producing more than
50 new plays. His directing credits include Polygraph (2001), Any Means
Necessary (2016) and the European premiere of The Kite Runner (2013). He also
oversaw the implementation of the Nottingham European Arts & Theatre
Festivals (neat).
1900-02, 1903-05, 1906-08, 1909-11, 1912-14, 1915-17,
1918-20, 1921-23, 1924-26, 1927-29, 1930-32, 1933-35, 1936-38, 1939-41,
1942-44, 1945-47, 1948-50, 1951-53, 1954-56, 1957-59, 1960, 1961-63, 1964-66,
1967-69, 1970-72, 1973-75, 1976-78, 1979-81, 1982-84, 1985-87, 1988-1990,
1991-93, 1994-96, 1997-99
