SEPTEMBER 2023 – From the author’s desk …
The politics of 1946…
Marmaduke, the third Earl Lundy tapped his wine glass lightly with his spoon and the room dutifully hushed.
“It now gives me great pleasure to introduce His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition Spokesman for Foreign Affairs, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Bath, Mr Alan Buxton, MP.”
The third Earl Lundy was very different from his late father. Although pleasant enough, he was a timid and shy man who, it was said was ruled with an iron fist by a harsh wife ‘from a family in trade’. He had trained as an architect specialising in church restoration and as a result was reliant on the income from his late father’s estate for a living. Isaac surmised that the family fortune was destined to last only for the proverbial ‘clog to clog in three generations’.
It was the first William Pitt Club dinner for two years and a poor shadow of previous ones; lounge suits instead of dinner jackets, poor food and indifferent wine. But everyone was there; Austwick, Groves, Sir Peter, Kohut, Bradshaw along with David Lloyd and Christopher Johnson, between whom Isaac was seated.
The Annual General Meeting of Bath Estates Limited had preceded the dinner, and was a dismal affair. The company had gone backwards over the last twelve months, mired in the bickering of local politicians amidst an acute shortage of building materials, and a lack of cash reserves. The dividend on the preference shares was passed – so yet again, nothing for Naomi’s £10,000. Worse, the company was even struggling to meet the half yearly dividend due on the outside investors debentures, because of rising interest rates and increased mortgage payments to the bank.
Marmaduke Lundy had taken the chair, but was clearly out of his depth. The mood had been sombre with the fear of loss starting to surface in some hostile questions. The atmosphere was clouded by dissatisfaction and Isaac wondered where the whole affair would end. Their guest, Alan Buxton, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Bath and Shadow Foreign Secretary, had started to talk.
“And so, as 1946 draws to a close, the first eighteen months of a Labour Government have produced precious little but grief.”
He went on to summarise the austerity measures taken that his listeners were more than aware of. It was worse than it had been during the war, with the introduction of bread rationing a few months earlier, and other rations further reduced. The country was broke and waiting for Attlee to get his begging bowl out and crawl back to the Americans for more expensive loans. He also wondered at what price – more US military bases in the colonies? As for repayment, it would take generations before Britain could be free of the Yankee debt and become Great Britain once again.
Turning to the international scene, which was Buxton’s portfolio in the House, things were an absolute mess.
“Just to mention a few,” he paused before continuing in single staccato sentences, counting them out on his fingers and pausing between each:
“One, bread riots in Paris;
Two, civil war in China;
Three, famine in India;
Four, forced resignation of King Umberto II in Italy;
Five, King of Thailand assassinated;
Six, martial law in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min guerrilla campaign against the French;
Seven, riots in Bombay for independence;
Eight, violent demonstration in Cairo, demanding unification with Sudan; and last but not least,
Nine, Zionist bombings in Jerusalem.”
An extract from Chapter Seventeen of ‘Go Swift and Far’ – the first novel in The Chronicles of Bath
AUGUST 2023 From the author’s desk …
The day the world changed forever, 10th August 1945.
…After that Sebastian studiously avoided discussing Ruth’s personal life, but the subject of Yann came up by chance one evening. They were seated in their usual place in the orangery. Ruth had been reading aloud from that morning’s Times about the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sebastian waited until he heard the rustle of the pages returning to her lap.
“Who could have believed that just one bomb could be so destructive? What a dangerous thing to have created,” he said. “It will only need one power-crazy politician, and it could be the end. World War Three could be over in days, no winners, just utter destruction. I don’t envy young people.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they will be growing up in such an uncertain and dangerous world. Attlee was right when he said on the radio last night that the A-bomb meant a naked choice between world co-operation and world destruction. Young couples must wonder what sort of world they will be bringing children into.”
“I disagree,” she said, “I am very clear what Yann needs. Love and security, with faith as a coat hook, available to hang his coat on, if and when he chooses to. And then there’s education. I still have to work out how he can get the best there is so that he’s got a passport to freedom, for when life gets tough.”
An extract from Chapter Fifteen of ‘Go Swift and Far’ – the first novel in The Chronicles of Bath
JULY 2023 From the author’s desk …
Eighty years ago, a vision of things to come?
…Bradshaw gazed appreciatively at it before he spoke.
“I must stress that this map is highly confidential, and because of the effect on morale, will not come into the public domain until next year. The effect of the air raids two years ago was massive gentlemen.” He stepped back to the table, picked up a buff folder, and passed it to David for circulation among the listeners.
“Again highly confidential – you will see it is marked ‘Secret’, which I think is over the top – but of more if not greater interest is the accompanying report by Mowbray Ashton Green and John Owens that lists every single property hit by enemy action, street by street and the local architects and builders appointed to deal with each.”
The room was silent as everyone studied the map, and the particular areas in which they owned property. Bradshaw moved to the second easel and removed the cloth. Identical to the first, black cross-hatching had been added to a third of the coloured areas. As if to make sure that he had the undivided attention of everyone in the room, again Bradshaw paused for effect.
“Every cross-hatched property is either owned or controlled by the people in this room: about forty per cent of the 19,000 buildings damaged in the air raids.”
The room rustled with anticipation.
His words hung in the air, and Isaac heard the slight intake of breath from David Lloyd next to him.
An extract from Chapter Twelve of ‘Go Swift and Far’ – the first novel in The Chronicles of Bath
From the author’s desk … June 2023
September 1944 and an important meeting in Bath.
‘Professor Stanley Frith, an expert from the Urban Town Planning Faculty at a leading university and engaged at a cost of many guineas, was drawing his speech to an end. The late morning sunlight flooded through the tall windows of Austwick & Co’s conference room., creating a halo behind his generous mop of unruly blonde hair, which was continually on the move as he attacked his subject with enthusiasm.
“The challenge of rebuilding Bath after the war will be immense. The 19,000 properties, together with those of its finest buildings, like the Assembly Rooms, destroyed or damaged by the bombings, has reduced the city to little more than a collection of bomb sites. It is these large derelict areas, which provide a golden opportunity – probably the first in three hundred years.”
His small but attentive audience followed his sweeping gesture towards the city outside, reduced to a honeyed blur by the strong autumn sunshine.
“I anticipate costs in the region of many millions of pounds. That, gentlemen, is where you play a vital role.”
The ten men, seated in two rows facing the professor, had enjoyed listening to the man’s vision, but as always it came down to cost.
“The City Council has one invaluable tool – the ability to compulsorily purchase every single one of the buildings with the necessary land. But it will be private enterprise that will be required to provide the money and the development expertise. To put it succinctly, gentlemen, if the city can be persuaded to acquire the land, it will be for you to rebuild Bath.”
The professor sat down to applause. Greed drove his audience’s interest.
Ken Kohut stood up, belly amply filling his waistcoat, fob watch chain almost at full stretch.
“Gentlemen, Professor Frith has kindly agreed to answer any questions before we break for lunch.”
The start of Chapter Twelve of ‘Go Swift and Far’ – the first novel in The Chronicles of Bath
From the author’s desk, May 2023
MAY 2023
From the author’s desk …
This morning my thoughts wandered back over 80 years to 1942, as I drove past Rainbow Wood – a magical woodland situated about one and a half miles south east of Bath on Claverton Down, surrounded by National Trust nurtured walkways.
…This was not an area that Ruth knew, but as the car turned left they passed Rainbow Wood…
…to those families who were conceived there, it was known as Pudding Club Wood
The car turned into North Road. Halfway down the steep hill, it slowed, and turned through two large stone pillars, on which ‘Lundy House’ was carved in faded lettering, and stopped…
…Ruth gazed out of her bedroom window at the spectacular view of Bath and beyond to Bristol. It was a crystal clear day and the city centre lay peacefully bathed in sunlight hundreds of feet below her. It looked deceptively undamaged by the recent air raids with the abbey dominating the city, completely unscathed. Nearby was the Empire Building, and perched on the hills opposite was the mirrored beauty of the Royal Crescent and Lansdown Crescent, all untouched by the bombs.
Her eye was caught by the bombed and blackened shell of the rugby stand at the Recreation Ground, and the collapsed end of St John’s Church. The mayhem of Kingsmead and New King Street were hidden…
An extract from chapter seven –‘ Go Swift and Far – a Tale of Bath’ The first book of The Westcott Chronicles
Peter King’s Glowing Recommendation
Peter King gives a glowing review and recommendation of An Unfolding Soul in Freshford’s Bulletin Winter 2018
Looking for an unusual and stimulating Christmas gift, or just a very good read? Go no further than Galleries, where you can purchase a signed cop of Douglas Westcott’s second novel An Unfolding Soul which tells the intriguing and revealing story of Bath’s re-development after the Second World War.
Will rapacious developers inflict more damage than Hitler’s Luftwaffe on the priceless fabric of our beloved Bath?
Ian Morris lies in a coma in Bath’s Royal United Hospital, mind and body shattered, with nothing remaining of his hard-earned fortune…
Can he recover to re-build his property empire? Will he be part of the greed-driven destruction gripping historical Bath in the ‘swinging sixties’? Or will he soften his rapacious desire for profit and recognise how to change his own destiny and restore the city’s fortunes? Personalities, real and imagines, inhabit this volume and readers will recognise many of these and aspects f the Bath scene over the second half of the twentieth century.
This is the real inside story which follows on from the highly acclaimed Go Swift and Far, published in 2015.
The author has a flair for writing a real page turner and for marketing the result, as you can see from the van, in which his son delivers the books!
– – Peter King, The Freshford Bulletin
An Insight Into Douglas Westcott’s Route to Authorship
Bestselling Bath author of Go Swift and Far and the newly released An Unfolding Soul talks us through his road to authorship and the immense influence of the Arvon Foundation.
“At the age of sixty, and freshly retired from a business life, I nervously booked my first Arvon course at Totleigh Barton in order to fulfill a lifelong desire to write about an extraordinary early life.
As the only child of a young Polish girl, who fled to England after the First World War and left me orphaned at seventeen, the story was there, but I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to turn it into a novel.
Eight years and six courses later at each one of the marvellous venues, my first book
‘Go Swift and Far’ was ready for Christmas 2013. Now, five years later my second, ‘An Unfolding Soul’, is released for this years festivities. No small thanks to the guidance and encouragement of the tutors, including Joanne Harris and James Friel, who persuaded me to persevere, despite the ‘loneliness and frustration of the long distance writer.
I could not have done this without Arvon, which I congratulate on its recent fiftieth birthday.”
Douglas Westcott
Bath & Bristol Small Publishers’ Gathering
The Bath & Bristol Small Publishers’ Gathering will be a day of small publishers talking to each other, and to their customers, about their books, on Saturday 3 November, 2018, in Bath at the Friends’ Meeting House on York Street.
The morning will be a trade event, with speakers and networking. The afternoon will open the Gathering to the public with free entry, to buy and sell books. Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press and Samantha Walton of Bath Spa University and Sad Press have organised the Gathering, in order to meet other small publishers, and get to know the publishing community in the west of England.
Douglas Westcott, the author of the bestselling Go Swift and Far and An Unfolding Soul, will be attending the event. He is an integral part of the literary landscape in the west of England setting both of his gripping novels in the historic city of Bath. Go Swift and Far was Westcott’s first novel and is an astounding bestseller selling over 10,000 copies in Bath alone. His latest novel, An Unfolding Soul is out now.
GET AN EXCLUSIVE SIGNED COPY HERE
Douglas Westcott Exclusive Signing on the 20th of October
On Saturday the 20th of October bestselling novelist Douglas Westcott will be at Waterstones in Bath giving an exclusive signing from 1pm.
Westcott has released two novels to date Go Swift and Far and An Unfolding Soul. Both novels explore the historic city of Bath at different key periods within it’s past, the first examining the destruction and aftermath of the Luftwaffe bombing and the second the poignant sixties.
An Unfolding Soul was released on the 20th of September 2018 and continues Wescott’s sweeping, coming of age saga, painting a shocking portrait of Bath, and shining a spotlight on little-known aspects of the city’s colourful past. Business, politics and history are interwoven in this page-turning tale, with Westcott’s engaging prose filled with moments of cultural interest, humour, and ultimately, hope.
Any lover of Bath or visitor to the historic city will be captivated by Westcott’s exceptional second novel.
Head to Waterstones on the 20th of October to hear more about these captivating novels and get your own special signed copy.
Waterstones Bath, 4-5 Milsom Street, Bath, BA1 1DA
An Unfolding Soul Launch Gallery
On the 20th of September 2018 An Unfolding Soul was launched at the Apex Hotel in Bath.
The hotly anticipated second novel from bestselling Bath author Douglas Westcott follows the huge success of his first, Go Swift and Far, which sold over 10,000 copies in Bath alone.
An Unfolding Soul continues Wescott’s sweeping, coming of age saga, painting a shocking portrait of Bath, and shining a spotlight on little-known aspects of the city’s colourful past. Business, politics and history are interwoven in this page-turning tale, with Westcott’s engaging prose filled with moments of cultural interest, humour, and, ultimately, hope.
To see all the excitement at the launch see the gallery below!
