OUT NOW!

Out Now! A new book about Notts and its writers

Follow the Moon and Stars

Featuring:

Dave Ablitt, Kristina Adams, Catherine Aird, Naomi Alderman, Meena Alexander, Zayneb Allak, Maria Allen, David Almond, Hans Christian Andersen, Joe Andrews, Norman Angell, Maya Angelou, Jane Anger, Narvel Annable, Amanda Arbouin, Lee Arbouin, Michael Argyle, Simon Armitage, Catharine Arnold, Chris Arnot, WH Auden, Jane Austen, Vicki Bertram, John Betjeman, Christopher Bigsby, Jasbinder Bilan, Max Dalman Binns, Ottwell Binns, Max Blagg, William Blake, Edith Bland, Lawrence Block, Enid Blyton, Stephen Booth, William Booth, Anthony Boucher, David Bowie, Sydney Box, Elizabeth Baguley, Philip James Bailey, Robin Bailey, Thomas Bailey, Roy Bainton, Panya Banjoko, Alan Baker, Paul Baker, Hongwei Bao, Pat Barker, Linda Barnes, Emma Barnett, Andy Barrett, JM Barrie, John Beckett, David Belbin, Gary Bell, Jo Bell, Kathleen Bell, Marco Bellocchio, Alan Bennett, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Berdmore, Michael Bracewell, Malcolm Bradbury, Richard Bradford, Rebecca Bradley, Emily Brand, Ken Brand, Simon Brett, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, John Potter Briscoe, Cornelius Brown, Pitman Browne, Alan Brownjohn, Rosslyn Bruce, Ruth Bryan, Emrys Bryson, Rebecca S Buck, Adrian Buckner, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Gladys Bungay, Graham Caveney, Tony Challis, Jessie Chambers, Raymond Chandler, Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Chatterton, GK Chesterton, Noam Chomsky, Agatha Christie, Russell Christie, Winston Churchill, Sir John Clanvowe, John Clare, John Stuart Clark (Brick), Lynda Clark, John Cooper Clarke, Lilleth Clarke, Susanna Clarke, John Cleese, Colin Clews, Wayne Burrows, Samuel Butler, Derrick Buttress, AS Byatt, Lord Byron,  Bill Bryson, Philip Callow, John le Carré, Liz Carney-Marsh, Barbara Cartland, Ken Coates, Peter Cochran, Jonathan Coe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wilkie Collins, Stephan Collishaw, Arthur Conan Doyle, Chris Cook Cann, Paul Cookson, Helen Cooper, Wendy Cope, Noel Coward, Thomas Cranmer, Helen Cresswell, Andy Croft, Noel Dilke, Jo Dixon, Robert Dodsley, Maura Dooley, Joan Downer, Roddy Doyle, John Drinkwater, Melanie Duffill-Jeffs, Carol Ann Duffy, Maureen Duffy, Bob Dylan, Sue Dymoke, Michael Eaton, David Edgley, Rowena Edlin-White, David Edwards, George Eliot, TS Eliot, Janice Elliott, John Emerton, Rowland Emett, Jonathan Emmett, Richmal Crompton, Anthony Cropper, Gillian Cross, Helen Cross, Rebecca Cullen, Joan Easdale, Mary Ann Cursham, Simon Cutts, Sarah Dale, Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, Alan Dawson (Jacques Morrell), Cecil Day Lewis (Nicholas Blake), Vivien Dayrell-Browning, Charles Deering, Daniel Defoe, Susie Dent, John Derry, Colin Dexter, Charles Dickens, Ruth Fainlight, Paul Farley, Christy Fearn, Elaine Feinstein, Marty Feldman, Jasper Fforde, Catherine Fisher, Robert Fisk, Ian Fleming, Alan Fletcher, Raymond Flynn, Ken Follett, EM Forster, Caroline Bell Foster, Kate Fox, Katherine Frank, Benjamin Franklin, Rich Goodson, Anne Goodwin, Nadine Gordimer, Frances Gore, Ray Gosling, Sue Grafton, James Graham, Gwen Grant, Andrew Graves, Robert Graves, Adrian Gray, Dulcie Gray, Zane Gray, Graham Greene, Germaine Greer, Norma Gregory, Frank Griffin, Elly Griffiths, Cathy Grindrod, Alan Guest, Stephen Haddelsey, Matt Haig, Madge Hales, John Foster Frazer, Michael Frayn, Sam Fuller, Neil Fulwood, Frances Fyfield, Rose Fyleman, Freddy Fynn, Faith Gakanje, Winifred Marshall Gales, Sheelagh Gallagher, Graeme Garden, Rosie Garner, Robert Garioch, Lenford Alphonso (Len) Garrison, Mark Gatiss, Abigail Gawthern, Evelyn Gibbs, Denis Gifford, Ann Gilbert, Sidney Giles, Eric Gill, Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Glaister, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lise Gold, Spencer Timothy Hall, Duncan Hamilton, Sophie Hannah, Thomas Hardy, Joanne Harris, Robert Harris, Noel Harrower, Dorothy Hartley, Clare Hartwell, John Harvey, Nicki Hastie, William Hatfield (Ernest Chapman), Spike Hawkins, Lucinda Hawksley, Colin Haynes, Jaq Hazell, W Carew Hazlitt, Seamus Heaney, John Hegley, Thomas Helwys, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Ernest Hemingway, Pippa Hennessy, Adrian Henri, George Henty, Robert Herrick, George Hickling (Rusticus), David (Stickman) Higgins, Patricia Highsmith, Tony Hillerman, Enid Hilton, Edward Hind, Muriel Florence Hine, Michael Hirst, Victoria Hislop, Merlin Holland, Stephen L Holland, Alan Hollinghurst, John Holmes, Michael Holroyd, Sam Hope, Mary Howitt, Richard Howitt, William Howitt, Michelle (Mother) Hubbard, Kathryn Hughes, Evan Hunter (Ed McBain), Lucy Hutchinson, Catherine Hutton, William Hutton, Aldous Huxley, Eric Idle, Washington Irving, William Ivory, Leonard Jacks, Kevin Jackson, Lisa Jackson, Mick Jackson, Sarah Jackson, Maxim Jakubowski, Clive James, Peter James, Alan Jenkins, Troy Jenkinson, Jerome K Jerome, Jane Jerram (Jane Elizabeth Holmes), Ruth L Johns, BS Johnson, Ben Jonson, Spencer Jordan, Graham Joyce, Rachel Joyce, Lucy Joynes, Alan Judd, Joshua Judson, Ken Kamoche, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, Siddharth Katragadda, Patrick Kavanagh, Campbell Kay, Jackie Kay, Joyce Lesley Keating, Francis King, Giselle Leeb, Paris Lees, Thomas Legendre, Clive Leivers, Dennis Lemon, Mark Lemon, Hilda Lewis, Maxine Linnell, Clare Littleford, David Livingstone, Noel Lloyd, Ralph Lloyd-Jones, Desmond King-Hele, Charles Kingsley, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Carolyn Kirby, Naomi Klein, Laura Knight (Laura Johnson), Sarah (Rain) Kolawole, Caroline Lamb, LD Lapinski, Philip Larkin, Birger Larsen, DH Lawrence, TM Logan, Christopher Logue, Ivory Longley, Lady Ada Lovelace, Peter Lovesey, RD Low, Edward Joseph Lowe, Stephen Lowe, John Lucas, Pauline Lucas, George MacBeth, Fiona MacCarthy, Robert Macfarlane, Mhairi Macfarlane, Robert Machray, Compton Mackenzie, Henry Maddock, Rod Madocks, Maurice Magnus, Sarah Maguire, Eve Makis, Mufaro Makubika, Eric Malpass, David Mamet, Emma Mardlin, Ngaio Marsh, Adam Mars-Jones, GJ Martin, Andy Maslen, Lila Matsumoto, Somerset Maugham, Armistead Maupin, Xavier Mayne, Val McDermid, Gavin and Oskar McIntosh, Ian McMillan, Colum McCann, Nigel McCrery, Roger McGough, Jimmy McGovern, Pat McGrath, Jon McGregor, Lisa Mckenzie, Jenny McLeod, Hollie McNish, Jonathan Meades, Arthur Mee, Robert Mellors, Paul Mendez, Stanley Middleton, Arthur Miller, Claude Miller, Kei Miller, Thomas Miller, Robert Millhouse, Stuart Mills, AA Milne, John Milton, Adrian Mitchell, Naomi Mitchison, Leanne Moden, Deborah Moggach, Nicola Monaghan (Niki Valentine), Bill Moody, Alison Moore, Beth Moran, Caitlin Moran, Michael Morpurgo, Jackie Morris, Blake Morrison, Helen Mort, Peter Mortimer, Andrew H Morton, Walter Mosley, Kate Mosse, Andrew Motion, Julie Myerson, Daljit Nagra, Suniti Namjoshi, Trevor Negus, AS Neil (Aaliyah), E Nesbit, Maureen Newton, Trish Nicholson, Robert Nieri, Henry Normal, Ben Norris, Deirdre O’Byrne, Bill Oddie, Geoffrey Oldfield, Eliza S Oldham, Betty Maxine, Tom Pickard, Paul A Pickering, Helena Pielichaty, John Shadrach Piercy, Elizabeth Pigot, Kathy Pimlott, Dave Pitt, Nigel Planer, Samuel Plumb, Charles Plumbe, Alexander Pope, Peter Porter, Christopher Pressler, Martin Priestman, VS Pritchett, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, George Powe, JB Priestley, James Prior (Kirke), James Orange, Baroness Orczy, Joe Orton, George Orwell, Philip Osment, Sally Outram, Thomas Paine, Frank (Baggy) Palmer, Sara Paretsky, Chris Parker, Thomas Parkyns, Martin Parnell, Brian Patten, Tom Paulin, Constance Penswick Smith, Gareth Peter, Nikolaus Pevsner, Nigel Pickard, Sheenagh Pugh, Ian Rankin, Onjali Raúf, Slavomir Rawicz, Paula Rawsthorne, Nicola Davison Reed, Ruth Rendell, Jean Rhys, Christopher Richardson, Peter Richardson, Séan Richardson, Lady Laura Ridding, Sylvia Riley (Carol Lake), Stella Rimington, Rosemary Robb, Cecil Roberts, Michèle Roberts, Celia Robertson, Thomas William Robertson, JB Robinson, Nicci Robinson (Robyn Nyx), Michael Rosen, Carrol Rowe, Jane Rule, AE Russell, Bertrand Russell, Frances Ryan, Manjit S Sahota, Thomas Sanders, George Saunders, John Brough Scott, Walter Scott, Tony ScuphamBilton, Thom Seddon, John Edward Bernard (Jack) Seely, Will Self, Shreya Sen-Handley, Dr Seuss, Dolly Sewell, Miranda Seymour, William Shakespeare, Sir Dodds Shaw, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Shelley, Percy B Shelley, Norman Sherry, Nevil Shute, Richard Silburn, Alan Sillitoe, Darren Simpson, Tony Simpson, Lemn Sissay, Di Slaney, Kim Slater (KL Slater), Ioney Smallhorne, Richard Smedley, Courtney Alexander Smith, Delia Smith, Freda Love Smith, Michael RD Smith, JC Snaith, Mahsunda Snaith, Mahendra Solanki, Robert Southey, Roderick Speer, Herbert Spencer, Bridie Squires, Michael Standen, Peter Stanford, Colin Stanley, Beth Steel, Debra Stephenson, Clare Stevens, Sharon RM Stevens, William Stevenson, Sue Thompson, Christopher Thomson, Robert Thoroton, Miriam Toews, JRR Tolkien, Claire Tomalin, Rebecca Tope, Barry Took, Geoffrey Trease, Anthony Trollope, Frances Trollope, Joanna Trollope, CJ Tudor, Gael Turnbull, Mark Twain, Barry Upton, Peter Ustinov, George Vason, Victoria Villasenor (Victoria Oldham), Francis Vivian (Arthur Ashley), Bram Stoker, Michael Stokes, Tom Stoppard (Tom Straussler), Richard Stott, Lytton Strachey, Lady Arbella Stuart, William Stukeley, Henry S Sutton, Jenny Swann, Julian Symons, Robert Tansey, Quentin Tarantino, Peter Tatchell, Bertrand Tavernier, Andrew Taylor, Megan Taylor, Alfred Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Frances Thimann, Sue Thomas, Marie Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, George Walker, James Walker, Peter Walker (Nicholas Rhea), Joan Wallace, John Waller, William Wallett, Hugh Walpole, Joanna Walsh, Minette Walters, Pemberton de Wanderer, Edward Ward, James Ward, Simon Ward, Rory Waterman, Gail Webb, Ernest Weekley, Matthew Welton, Angus Wells, Donald E Westlake, Jo Weston, Dorothy Whipple, Phil Whitaker, Cathy White, Henry Kirke White, Amanda Whittington, Oscar Wilde, Georgina Wilding, Leah Wilkins, Jo Willett, Alan Williams, Joanna Williams, Tennessee Williams, Leslie Williamson, Colin Wilson, Glenis Wilson, Godfrey Winn, Jackie Winter, Jeanette Winterson, PG Wodehouse, Nick Wood, Gregory Woods, Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Keith Wright, WB Yeats, Jackie Yelland, Kerry Young, Benjamin Zephaniah, Alice Zimmern, Ztan Zmith.

Read Follow the Moon and Stars to find out:

·        How a Nottingham woman inspired George Eliot’s Adam Bede

·        Why Philip Larkin always wore a DH Lawrence T-shirt when mowing the lawn.

·        Which James Bond novel features Nottingham Castle and Sherwood Forest.

·        Who took Agatha Christie for tea in Nottingham’s Arboretum.

·        Which Nottingham writer’s books were bombed by the Nazis.

·        Why Quentin Tarantino said that “Nottingham is a really cool city”.

·        Which Nottingham writer appears in an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

·        Why Charles Dickens was called to Ada Lovelace’s deathbed.

·        Who was known as Nottingham’s Robinson Crusoe.

·        How Alan Sillitoe met his wife in a Nottingham bookshop.

·        Who was Shakespeare’s Nottingham Knight.

·        Which Nottingham man was the first person to write a defence of universal religious freedom in English.

·        Which Nottingham man did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle write a poem about.

·        How a Nottingham man wrote the first scientific work on dentistry.

·        Where in Notts was the writer of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" born.

·        Which Nottingham poet was the first Briton to explicitly write about evolution.

·        Which Nottingham writer takes credit for the Doctor Dolittle stories being published.

And much more...

Over 400 pages. Over 200 images. In paperback and hardback. Published by Five Leaves Publications and available now! 

Books From A City

Books From a City – a small selection of our finest

Novels set in Nottingham

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)

'I tell you I've written a great book,’ said Lawrence to his publisher on sending a manuscript of Sons and Lovers, his compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations. Paul Morel, on becoming the centre of his disappointed and fiercely protective mother's world, is torn between his individual desires and family allegiances.

A Terrace in the Sun by Cecil Roberts (1951)

The book opens amid the fading luxury and glamour of the French coast but we soon head to Nottingham in what is Robert’s self-titled “Nottingham novel”, a semi-biographical account of his growing up and coming of age here. Somewhat lost and underrated, the book captures an early 20^th Century Nottingham.

Penny Lace by Hilda Lewis (1957)

Probably the best novel about our lace industry Penny Lace is insightful and authentically descriptive. Driven by resentment, Mr Penny adopts new methods of working that undercut his rivals, one such man being his own father-in-law.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe (1958)

For twenty-two-year-old Arthur Seaton, a factory worker at Raleigh in Nottingham, life is one long battle with authority. After work is done Arthur becomes a hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hedonist, happy to bed married women and stuff the consequences. But can he cheat the world before it cheats him? 

Set in a fictionalised version of the city.

A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene (1936)

After returning to England, gun-for-hire Raven is paid in stolen notes. Bent of revenge the ruthless anti-hero pursues an agent who crosses him. A cat-and-mouse chase follows as a detective-sergeant tracks Raven to Nottwich (Nottingham). As the action takes place it appears to the reader that the killing Raven was hired for might have been intended to trigger war.

A Great Adventure by Muriel Hine (1942)

Set in the 1880s, A Great Adventure is based on Hine’s childhood in Nottingham. The story features her family home on the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street (not far from the Playhouse); The Park is named The Chase, and as her characters navigate their way around Lacingham (Nottingham) their paths exactly match those of Nottingham at that time.

They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple (1943)

The Blakes are an ordinary family: Celia looks after the house and Thomas works at the family engineering business. This book begins when he meets Mr Knight - a crooked financier – and goes on to track the Blakes’ swift climb and fall. The story is set in Trentham (Nottingham).

Harris’s Requiem by Stanley Middleton (1960)

‘Beechnall is Nottingham, the whole thing,’ admitted Middleton, who ‘crossed Bulwell with Hucknall’ when devising the name. When Thomas Harris’s coal-miner father dies, Harris (a teacher/composer) decides to write a requiem for him which is also a thinly veiled attack on the powerful elite.

Notts Crime Fiction

Top Hard by Stephen Booth (1988)

In a world full of injustice, among people still haunted by memories of the miners' strike, Stones McClure is a man trying to put his old life behind him for good. But survival in this part of the world depends on the Top Hard Rule - you can't trust anyone these days.

Easy Meat by John Harvey (1996)

Nottingham’s finest detective, DI Charlie Resnick, comes into contact with Hannah Campbell with whom he finds himself falling unexpectedly and awkwardly in love. This case involves Nicky Snape, a teenage, long-time petty juvenile offender, who has been picked up for killing Eric Netherfield, only to turn up dead himself two days later.

Bone and Cane by David Belbin (2011)

It’s 1997 and Labour MP Sarah Bone celebrates a successful campaign to secure an appeal for a convicted murderer, but she soon discovers that he might be guilty after all. Driven to uncover the truth, she also has to fight the most important election of a generation, one she is expected to lose. This is the first in a series.

Dead Flowers by Nicola Monaghan (2020)

Hardened by ten years on the murder squad, DNA analyst Doctor Sian Love has seen it all. So when she finds human remains in the basement of her new home, she knows the drill. In a parallel narrative taking us back to the late 1960s we discover how it all came to be.

By Lost Nottingham Writers

The Sailor by JC Snaith (1916)

The story opens in a rough part of a textile town where Henry, a small boy, is crouched in desperate terror against the wall of a blind alley, while his drunken and terrible old aunt stands over him, heavy lash in hand, taunting the child before striking him. After escaping, Henry experiences an extraordinary life as a mariner.

Desert Saga by William Hatfield (1933)

Born Ernest Chapman (a son of Hyson Green), Hatfield’s most serious novel was Desert Saga, about an Aboriginal boy, one of the Arunta people. It portrays the various white invasions of their land and culture. After moving to Australia the author sympathetically studied Aboriginal languages and customs.

The Death of Mr. Lomas by Francis Vivian (1941)

When Mr. Lomas visits the Chief Constable of Burnham and describes his symptoms, Sir Wilfred Burrows believes that his visitor suffers from nothing more serious than nerves. Later that day Mr. Lomas's body is recovered from the water at Willow Lock; yet death is not by drowning. This is the first in a series. 

The Vixen’s Cub by Katharine Morris (1951)

Born in Lenton, buried in Bleasby, ‘Mollie’ Morris published five Notts set novels between 1933 and 1958. Her gentle stories of life in the English countryside include The Vixen's Cub, published by Macdonald of London. Morris became involved in PEN during the 1930s, the human rights organisation originally for ‘Poets, Essayists and Novelists’.  

Set in Notts - Children’s & YA books

A Princess Comes to Our Town by Rose Fyleman (1927)

Princess Finestra doesn’t want to marry the boring prince her mother and father, the Fairy King and Queen, have chosen for her. She wants to have adventures in real life, so her godmother arranges for her to be transported to Nottingham’s Market-place, where she meets the narrator of the story.

Bows Against the Barons by Geoffrey Trease (1934)

A young lad from Nottingham is made an outlaw for killing one of the king's deer. His fight against injustice is aided by the commoners’ great leader. Robin Hood and his band of rebels stand against the elite in this radical telling of the story.

Accidental Friends by Helena Pielichaty (2008)

Thrust together on the first day of term at college, four youngsters form an unlikely and uneasy alliance that eventually leads to friendship, and even love. A life-threatening, accident tests this friendship and loyalty to the extreme. Set in Newark.

Smart by Kim Slater (2014)

There's been a murder, but the police don't seem to care. It’s over to the detective skills of young Kieran Woods who is amazing at drawing but terrible at fitting in. Slater's outstanding debut is a moving and compelling novel with a loveable character at its heart.

Must-read Novels (by Notts writers)

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler (1903)

Written between 1873 and 1884 and published posthumously, this is a semi-autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood that shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life and questions conventional values. Set in a fictionalised Notts.

Holiday by Stanley Middleton (1974)

The 1974 Booker Prize winning Holiday sees a grieving Edwin Fisher seek understanding. The recently separated lecturer visits a seaside resort where he ponders the themes of life, death and broken relationships. Told through thoughts and flashbacks we enter the head of Fisher, a disgruntled, contemptuous and vulnerable man in need of security.

Fatherland by Robert Harris (1992)

The best-selling thriller writer began his move to fiction with Fatherland, a detective story/alternate history in which Nazi Germany won World War II. The protagonist is an officer of the Kripo, the criminal police, who is investigating the murder of a government official.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor (2002)

This incredible debut is a day in the life of an ordinary suburban British street, with the plot alternately following the lives of its various inhabitants. All but one person's viewpoint is described in the third person, and the narrative uses a flowing grammatical and poetic style which mimics their thought processes.