A roam around my books 11 – the missing narratives from history

The scope of the historian is potentially everything which has gone before. If the scholar has any chance of recounting, or even understanding a fragment of the past, they must be selective in the remit of their research. Perhaps a tendency to create silos is inherent in the discipline in order for the past to become manageable.  Gloria Steinem has commented on the media’s pre-occupation during the sixties with labelling activists as either civil rights or feminist campaigners even though many were both. The women saw  a commitment to both causes as part of the same struggle. Often lives can be intertwined but their historical reputations are viewed through the prism of different lenses.

I am thinking of African-born former slave, Olaudah Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa), and Thomas Hardy, the Scottish shoemaker who lodged in the same house at Piccadilly, London during 1791.  For those who digest their history from the big screen rather than books, Equiano was played by Youssou N’dour opposite Rufus Sewell’s Thomas Clarkson in the film “Amazing Grace”. Both were supporting actors to Ioan Gruddudd who took the lead as William Wilberforce. Wilberforce, the voice of the anti-slavery movement in parliament, is probably the name most widely recognised today as a campaigner against the trade. Equiano and Clarkson were the activists on the ground, traveling the British Isles to gain support from ordinary men and women for abolition.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonIMG_0060-2-300x196 A roam around my books 11 - the missing narratives from history

Youssou N’Dour and Rufus Sewell as Equiano and Clarkson in the film ‘Amazing Grace’.

Although the name of the Tory MP is widely associated with the anti slavery movement I do not recall any black campaigners being mentioned, nor the role of slave rebellions which contributed to the ending of the trade and ultimately the institution in British colonies.

In 1792 Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society which agitated for the democratic reform of parliament. Hardy’s Society was an established part of my grammar school syllabus, as was the contribution of founding member Francis Place. Equiano was an early founding member of the Society, too, but his role in eighteenth century politics is usually assigned exclusively to the anti-slavery movement and his involvement with advocating for British democracy is overlooked. Hardy is singularly associated with the struggle for parliamentary reform rather than abolition.

One activist rarely mentioned in either struggle is Lydia Hardy, the Chesney-born wife of Thomas Hardy and mother of his six children. She was a leader in the campaign for the abstention of slave-grown sugar and was also lodging in the Piccadilly household with her husband and Equiano. As far as I am aware there has been no attempt to bring Lydia’s story to the big screen although her life was very dramatic and tragic. Perhaps, arguably, Equiano is today acknowledged as a black abolitionist in Britain, but he was not alone. He was one of a group known as the Sons of Africa who used to correspond with the London papers to advocate on behalf of the enslaved.

 

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A roam around my books 10 – the empty spaces

Now there are empty spaces on bookshelves which were once densely populated and over-flowing.But some books have escaped the cull for years, and probably always will.  Their spines crowd the shelves with memories of years gone by, as evocative as the fading photographs in my albums.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonimage-300x225 A roam around my books 10 - the empty spacesBooks studied earnestly for uni seminars and essays – which I have noticed also still populate the bookshelves of my contemporaries – sit alongside biographies and autobiographies of politicians and favourite celebrities. An interest in the presentation of the lives of others seems to have permeated all my book-reading decades.

 

Yet the attraction of dialectical materialism seems to have given way to a fascination with magical realism in my later twenties. Columbian fiction, native ameriGuilt by Lynn Steinsonimage-300x225 A roam around my books 10 - the empty spacescan shamanism and handbooks for the tarot sit a short way from Marx and Engels. Perhaps these political thinkers’ faith in the miraculous “withering away of the state” was not that far removed from the dreams of the shamans.

Then there are the empty spaces occupied by the missing books – those that perished in the cull and were deported to Oxfam. These spaces largely belong to the forgotten plots of novels. Their browning pages, crammed with fading text served only to deter all but the most determined reader.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonimage-300x225 A roam around my books 10 - the empty spaces

 

There is a shelf which should rarely be disturbed. The books that recline here are a displacement activity for writing. If you are reading about writing why aren’t you actually doing it?  Get in your writing practice! But perhaps I’m being unfair. I have found Stephen King’s book On Writing a good read.

 

Other shelves are packed with tour guides to countries spanning all five continents.  All but a few are well-thumbed. The few pristine books unfortunately now surplus to requirements due to the alarming changes in the  geo-political landscape. Their tenure is likely to be terminated shortly to make way for guides to places soon to be visited.

I suspect a visitor might deduce something of my character and interests, and even my career, from a trawl of my bookshelves. This is less likely in the future, as more spaces appear. The successors to the discarded paperbacks now hide in a virtual library on Kindle or even as an audible book. As i-tunes devoured our music  collections so Kindle usurps the printed page. Perhaps our wardrobes, if still cluttered with outfits from previous decades, will be the only tangible clues to our own life histories.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonimage-300x225 A roam around my books 10 - the empty spaces

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Guilt – the gripping new psychological thriller.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonGuilt-cover-2-190x300 Guilt - the gripping new psychological thriller.Manchester is enjoying a long hot summer but Lisa hasn’t noticed. She’s dreading being called as the chief witness in a murder trial. That’s after she has attended the funerals of the victims.

In London her colleagues at Bergers advertising agency are horrified to hear rumours that they are to be relocated to Manchester.  Rory is dispatched to the north on a mission to keep Lisa and her ambitious manager Corinne in line – at all costs.  

Lisa thinks she is keeping it all together, until colleague Tasmin asks, ‘Lisa, have you seen this? I think you should know what’s been Tweeted about you. You have a troll and not a very nice one.’ 

Guilt is about the surviving members of The Sun pub quiz team. It is the sequel to Deluded

Buy GUILT at Amazon

‘Good story, humour, suspense and fabulous dialogue. 
A veritable love letter to Manchester.’ 

Listen to the Spotify playlist

GUILT playlist on Spotify

What’s going on? Marvin Gaye

Hit the north The Fall

Suffragette city David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars

This charming man The Smiths

Don’t you forget about me Simple Minds

Say it isn’t so Daryl Hall and John Oates

Never forget Take That

Blue Monday New Order

Long hot summer Style Council

Every day hurts Sad Cafe

Like a prayer Madonna

You really got a hold on me The Miracles

Back to life Soul II Soul

I’m doing fine now The Pasadenas

Back stabbers The O’Jays

Teenage kicks The Undertones

Please don’t go KC and the Sunshine Band

Going underground The Jam

The killing moon Echo and the Bunnymen

You really got me The Kinks

I feel for you Chaka Khan

There is a light that never goes out The Smiths

Even after all Finley Quaye

Always the sun Stranglers

This is how it feels Inspiral Carpets

You get what you give The New Radicals

The changing man Paul Weller

The message Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

Our lips are sealed Fun Boy Three

Unfinished sympathy Massive Atttack

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonGuilt-cover-2-190x300 Guilt - the gripping new psychological thriller.Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021 Lynn Steinson
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A roam about my books 9 – in search of postmodernism

Postmodernism- what is it?

‘You’re not a post-modernist are you?’ enquires my tutor accusingly, in a tone that suggests I might be trouble.  
          ‘Uhh, I do not…know,’ I reply slowly, trying to express some gravitas in my voice, as if my response was based on intellectual grounds rather than ignorance.

The next day, on my way to a seminar on critical thinking I see lots of posters have suddenly appeared advertising a series of seminars on “Postmodernism-what is it?  Wednesday 24 September 2.00 pm and then every other week”’  I will have to change my plans but this seems fortuitous so I head over to the postgraduate office. From behind the counter a girl peers through a crenel in the battlement of computers which divide students from those appointed to help them and she quickly dispatches me to see Paul in another office. I ask Paul if he knows anything about the seminar which is due to happen this afternoon.         
            ‘Oh, yes,’ he replies confidently, ‘I do.’
            ‘Yes?’
            ‘It’s cancelled today. There was a timetable clash. The lecturer had research to do in Ireland’.
            ‘Well, can you tell me anything about it?’
            ‘Just put your name on this list and you will be e-mailed… ‘
           So I return to the first plan and head off to ‘Critical Thinking’.
           ‘And so what is critical thinking?’ the Professor asks in perfect English which has a beguiling quality bestowed by an alluring French accent. No one responds. I search my brain for a definition. Intelligent questioning? I am still pondering when he surrenders to the collective silence of the group and turns to his next slide,  ‘Critical thinking is the process defined as the hermeneutics of suspicion.’ 
            Later, after spending some time looking up the meaning of various words used in his lecture, I understand that the key message was that if you want to appear scholarly you have to learn and use your subject’s jargon, sorry its tropes, with confidence.

Almost a week later and I try and find out if the ‘Postmodernism-what is it?’ seminar has been rearranged. First I check the notice boards so that I do not needlessly bother the office.  The notices are still up. I head for the office. A head briefly darts out from behind a computer.
            ‘Hi, please can you tell me what has happened to the seminar “Postmodernism -what is it?” It was supposed to be held last Wednesday but it was cancelled. Is it going to run tomorrow?’
            ‘Well I have the tag list here.’ Indeed she does have a list of everyone’s name and e-mail addresses by her right arm.
            ‘Yes, that is the list we were asked to add our details to so that we could be contacted. It was thought it might run tomorrow.’
            ‘I will try and find out for you.’ Busy activity at the computer. ‘Yes the problem with the timetabling has been resolved and it will run as the notice says.’
            ‘So it will run a week on Wednesday then?’
            ‘No, the 24 September.’
           ‘But it is 2 October today. That was last week. It was cancelled. It did not happen.’ 
            She looks at me as if I am being needlessly awkward. ‘Oh so, aahm, I will e-mail Stephen to find out and then e-mail you’.
            ‘Thank you. I think everyone else on that list would like to know as well.’ I offer helpfully, though I know, pointlessly.

Wednesday, two weeks after I saw the posters about the seminar, and having received no e-mails, I return to the postgraduate office in search of the Holy Grail. Three heads quickly flit back behind the computer parapet and the chatter abruptly stops and is replaced by the tappetty-tap of typing as I enter the room. By veering to the left and crouching a little I manage to catch the eye of the girl and she reluctantly offers assistance.

            ‘The seminar “Postmodernism, what is it?” Do you know if it will run?’
            ‘Are you on the list?’
            ‘Yes, I am on the list but I have not been told about anything.’
            She sighs and gets up, walks round the counter and out of the door and disappears. I wait listening to the clatter of fingertips on keyboards. A few minutes later she returns.
            ‘No, sorry we do not know anything.’ 
            ‘Nothing?’
            ‘No, nothing at all.’

 

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonthumbnail_IMG_2310-1-186x300 A roam about my books 9 - in search of postmodernismRobert Eaglestone’s book Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial is the only reference to postmodernism on my bookshelves. It reminds me that there are no volumes by the French political philosophers who shaped the generations of arts, humanities and social science undergraduates who followed me. Unlike the books about mid-twentieth century politicians which were allowed to grace my bookshelves for a few years before giving way to newcomers, the postmodernists never materialised in physical form in my bookcases at all. My curiosity about the writings of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu was satiated by Google and Wikipedia. Eaglestone’s book reminds me of my attempts to find out more about postmodernism as I began the first term of a Masters course.

Postmodernism- what is it?

‘You’re not a post-modernist are you?’ enquires my tutor accusingly, in a tone that suggests I might be trouble.  
          ‘Uhh, I do not…know,’ I reply slowly, trying to express some gravitas in my voice, as if my response was based on intellectual grounds rather than ignorance.

The next day, on my way to a seminar on critical thinking I see lots of posters have suddenly appeared advertising a series of seminars on “Postmodernism-what is it?  Wednesday 24 September 2.00 pm and then every other week”’  I will have to change my plans but this seems fortuitous so I head over to the postgraduate office. From behind the counter a girl peers through a crenel in the battlement of computers which divide students from those appointed to help them and she quickly dispatches me to see Paul in another office. I ask Paul if he knows anything about the seminar which is due to happen this afternoon.         
            ‘Oh, yes,’ he replies confidently, ‘I do.’
            ‘Yes?’
            ‘It’s cancelled today. There was a timetable clash. The lecturer had research to do in Ireland’.
            ‘Well, can you tell me anything about it?’
            ‘Just put your name on this list and you will be e-mailed… ‘
           So I return to the first plan and head off to ‘Critical Thinking’.
           ‘And so what is critical thinking?’ the Professor asks in perfect English which has a beguiling quality bestowed by an alluring French accent. No one responds. I search my brain for a definition. Intelligent questioning? I am still pondering when he surrenders to the collective silence of the group and turns to his next slide,  ‘Critical thinking is the process defined as the hermeneutics of suspicion.’ 
            Later, after spending some time looking up the meaning of various words used in his lecture, I understand that the key message was that if you want to appear scholarly you have to learn and use your subject’s jargon, sorry its tropes, with confidence.

Almost a week later and I try and find out if the ‘Postmodernism-what is it?’ seminar has been rearranged. First I check the notice boards so that I do not needlessly bother the office.  The notices are still up. I head for the office. A head briefly darts out from behind a computer.
            ‘Hi, please can you tell me what has happened to the seminar “Postmodernism -what is it?” It was supposed to be held last Wednesday but it was cancelled. Is it going to run tomorrow?’
            ‘Well I have the tag list here.’ Indeed she does have a list of everyone’s name and e-mail addresses by her right arm.
            ‘Yes, that is the list we were asked to add our details to so that we could be contacted. It was thought it might run tomorrow.’
            ‘I will try and find out for you.’ Busy activity at the computer. ‘Yes the problem with the timetabling has been resolved and it will run as the notice says.’
            ‘So it will run a week on Wednesday then?’
            ‘No, the 24 September.’
           ‘But it is 2 October today. That was last week. It was cancelled. It did not happen.’ 
            She looks at me as if I am being needlessly awkward. ‘Oh so, aahm, I will e-mail Stephen to find out and then e-mail you’.
            ‘Thank you. I think everyone else on that list would like to know as well.’ I offer helpfully, though I know, pointlessly.

Wednesday, two weeks after I saw the posters about the seminar, and having received no e-mails, I return to the postgraduate office in search of the Holy Grail. Three heads quickly flit back behind the computer parapet and the chatter abruptly stops and is replaced by the tappetty-tap of typing as I enter the room. By veering to the left and crouching a little I manage to catch the eye of the girl and she reluctantly offers assistance.

            ‘The seminar “Postmodernism, what is it?” Do you know if it will run?’
            ‘Are you on the list?’
            ‘Yes, I am on the list but I have not been told about anything.’
            She sighs and gets up, walks round the counter and out of the door and disappears. I wait listening to the clatter of fingertips on keyboards. A few minutes later she returns.
            ‘No, sorry we do not know anything.’ 
            ‘Nothing?’
            ‘No, nothing at all.’

 

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonthumbnail_IMG_2310-1-186x300 A roam about my books 9 - in search of postmodernismCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2021 Lynn Steinson
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A roam around my books 8 – staying power

‘There were Africans in Britain before the English came here’ is certainly a great opening line, but for me there’s nothing like a good footnote. Peter Fryer’s Staying Power is packed with them, or I should say endnotes. One hundred and forty pages of signposts to more troves of hidden knowledge. Plus, there’s a whole section on Further Reading. It’s the book that just keeps on giving.

I bought this study of the black presence in Britain a few years after it was published while I was working in Liverpool. At the time I was intending to write a novel set in the eighteenth century port. I am not sure if the book inspired the idea for the story, or if it was acquired as part of my research. I still have a box containing the opening chapters and plan, plus notes and photographs of numerous eighteenth century Liverpudlian doorways in dilapidated buildings. I’m not sure how I knew where to find them, but I did.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonsepia-georgian-liverpool-300x273 A roam around my books 8 - staying power

Georgian Liverpool photographed in the 1980s

I remember unexpectedly coming across a stray vessel from the tall ships race as I approached the waterfront one evening. It was twilight, the masts were silhouetted against the sky. Black birds crowded its rigging. It was dark and foreboding but majestic, too. A very powerful image, and I’m sure it would have demanded a paragraph in my never-to-be-finished historical novel.

Within Fryer’s endnotes were references to books that I would only be able to acquire some years later, once the Internet had made it easy to purchase out-of-print books and magazines. This included the work of Nigerian historian Folerin O. Shyllon. His books Black slaves in Britain and Black people in Britain 1555-1833, in which the Sons of Africa [1] are rescued from the “enormous condescension of history”[2] are a pleasure.

Finding the Country Life Annual 1967 was also a coup. G. Bernard Wood recounts local folk lore about the use of black slaves in the country houses and quarries of the Lake District and North Yorkshire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The article by G. Bernard Woods was the source for this story in Staying Power.

Other victims were the black children sold as house-boys in Westmorland early in the nineteenth century. The Liverpool merchant John Bolton would pick out young boys from his slave cargoes and transfer them to Greenodd. A local young man would smuggle them up to the Leven Valley to Windermere, where they were taken to Storrs Hall which Bolton owned, and sold to the local gentry. Other victims again were black youths who toiled in the marble quarries at Rigg End, near Dent in the West Riding, by Liverpool slave-merchant, Sill. [3]

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonsepia-georgian-liverpool-300x273 A roam around my books 8 - staying power

Storrs Hall near Windermere

The article also mentions some oral history tapes which were made in the 1960s by a Mr T Wray Milnes of Lea Yeat in Dentdale. Milnes was recording tales from local inhabitants – some of their grandparents would have been alive when the slave trade in the British Empire was abolished by parliament. Unfortunately I have been unable to track down these tapes.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonsepia-georgian-liverpool-300x273 A roam around my books 8 - staying power

Dent, North Yorkshire

Some years later I also made contact with Kim Lyons, a local history expert of Dentdale.  She gave me a fascinating insight into local folklore about the slave trail in the north west. Slaves were brought into Whitehaven and auctioned in Kelleth Square. She had some very interesting stories, some of them chilling, but I think they are for her and her family to tell, not for me. Academic historians have dismissed much of this folk lore, but it is a verifiable fact that Africans were house servants in the grand houses of England, so there must have been the means to traffic them there.

Footnotes

  1. The Sons of Africa were black agitators against slavery in the eighteenth century. Their letters are reproduced in Appendix II of Black People in Britain. They were led by Olaudah Equiano a.k.a. Gustavus Vassa, associate of Thomas Clarkson and also Manchester’s Thomas Walker.

2.  Quoting from E. P. Thompson’s  epic Making of the English Working Class

3.  Staying Power, Fryer Peter, 1984. p 228 reference to footnotes 2 and 3.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonsepia-georgian-liverpool-300x273 A roam around my books 8 - staying power

Peter Fryer’s Staying Power had recently been reissued. It was first published in 1984. My edition is the fourth impression 1989.Guilt by Lynn Steinsonsepia-georgian-liverpool-300x273 A roam around my books 8 - staying powerCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2017-2019 Lynn Steinson

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Akala

When Akala was twelve he was in the top 1% of his age group in mathematics. That was almost 25 years ago and, in these times when political discourse is dominated by obfuscation and hypocrisy, his grasp of statistics and passion for evidencing an argument is refreshing.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonakala-254x300 Akala

Akala at Waterstones, Manchester. May 2018

‘This is the only time I will quote Tony Blair,’ he says referring to  the New Labour mantra education, education, education. Hardly anyone who leaves university at 21 gets shot and goes to prison, he puts out. His thirteen year old peers are all in jail or dead.   42% of people in prison have been expelled from school. 24% have been in care. The statistics show where the problem lies and how resources should be targeted. It costs money to incarcerate people. Why not use the money to address the issue before it is too late?

Akala survived the dangerous teenage years to become an award winning rap artist, documentary writer, founder of the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company and now author. He is promoting his book Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, a study of how race and class shape lives and which reconciles the sweep of history with individual experience. He describes himself as ‘someone who barely went to college yet who has lectured at almost every university in the country. I come from one of the statistically least likely groups to attain five GCSE passes – white and ‘mixed-race’ boys on free school meals fail at an even greater rate than ‘fully black’ boys on free school do – but I got ten GCSEs, including multiple A* grades. I took my maths GCSE a year early and attended the Royal Institution’s Mathematics masterclasses as a schoolboy…. When I say I could have been a statistic – another working-class black man dead or in prison – people who did not grow up how we grew up probably think that’s an exaggeration. But people that grew up like us know just how real this statement is, just how easily the scales could have been tipped.’

In a GQ magazine interview with Eleanor Halls he says, ‘I think I was very lucky because I went to a pan-African Saturday school. I was taught a community vision of history that was different to the mainstream vision. Mainstream intelligence and mainstream society has a way of presenting itself as the norm. This is history, this is what happened. Any serious student of history knows it’s not exactly that simple, and even the mere act of writing a history book means you’re going to choose what evidence to include, what evidence to not include, what narrative to tell, and what narrative not to tell. It’s like editing a film – there are rushes that get left out. It doesn’t even always mean you’re deliberately being biased – just the act of creating a historical narrative necessitates a perspective.’

He quotes E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, Cheikh Anta Diop, Franz Fanon and Lao Tzu as influences but ‘I also read a lot of stuff I disagree with. I read a lot of Niall Ferguson. I don’t like his work, and I completely disagree with [his] historical perspective, but you can’t only read people you agree with, otherwise all you get is bias confirmation.’

On Windrush.

The government has turned British citizens who paid for themselves to come here into immigrants. Why would the Windrush generation register for citizenship when they are already citizens? Race and class are a way of playing people against each other.

On ethnicity

When they say ethnicity is the reason for crime it gives the police who are bigoted licence. Should the Prime Minister be ethnically responsible for white paedophiles who work at the BBC?

On violence

I have one request, going forward can we try to use the appropriate term #seriousyouthviolence rather than just ‘Knife crime’ – I know its a mouthful but ‘knife crime’ seems to have become a dog whistle that does little to encourage serious thought at this point…

Links

 GQ Interview with Eleanor Halls Retrieved 10:50 19/3/2019

Guardian interview with Owen Jones, 18/3/2019

Good Morning Britain interview with Piers Morgan,18/3/2019

Hip-hop Shakespeare Company Retrieved 10:50 19/3/2019

Roots, Reggae and Rebellion, Akala’s BBC documentary 2016 Retrieved 15:23 19/3/2019

Akala was speaking at a Waterstones event in Manchester on 15 May 2018. The review was updated on 19 March 2019 to reflect recent news.

 

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

The paperback is available on 21 March 2019

 Guilt by Lynn Steinsonakala-254x300 AkalaCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2019 Lynn Steinson

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Deluded, the gripping psychological thriller

 

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncropped-Lynn_Rawlinson-_Book_Cover-300x300 Deluded, the gripping psychological thriller

If you are going to The Sun be careful who you might meet. Be very careful. 

The secrets of four members of a pub quiz team are entwined with deadly consequences in this gripping new psychological thriller.

Lisa thinks she has it all – dream job, besotted boyfriend, loyal friends, even her pub quiz team might win. But she’s about to find out that things aren’t quite as they seem. As she pits her wits against charismatic Judith’s wiles her amateur investigations trigger a murderous chain of events. Who is Judith? And just who is deluded?

Buy DELUDED at the Kindle Store or as a paperback from Amazon DELUDED ***Top 3 Book*** A gripping psychological thriller

READER’S REVIEWS

An intriguing read, with some excellent twists and turns. 

Lots of twists and turns. Good characters which were all enjoyable and great pub quiz’s. Thoroughly enjoyed it hence my 5 star review.

This book is a great read. A psychological thriller that draws you in from the first page and keeps you guessing until the very end. Join the members of the pub quiz team and discover all their secrets. Very well written and listen to the playlist on Spotify. I connected to this book on so many levels.

Brilliant book. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Full of twists and turns all the way through it. Kept me intrigued right to the end.

Found this really enjoyable with very believable and well rounded characters holding your attention while the plot moves along quickly and keeps you on your toes as the story progresses! Recommended.

Really enjoyed this book and once I got into it I couldn’t put it down. I don’t read a great deal of books but this caught my eye.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I don’t generally read thrillers but I found it intriguing and gripping and definitely didn’t guess what would unfold as the book went on! The descriptive writing is excellent.

FREE on KINDLE UNLIMITED

You can listen to the DELUDED playlist on Spotify by clicking this link DELUDED PLAYLIST.

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR 

Follow the link to Altrincham Word Fest website

 

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncropped-Lynn_Rawlinson-_Book_Cover-300x300 Deluded, the gripping psychological thriller

 
 

 

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncropped-Lynn_Rawlinson-_Book_Cover-300x300 Deluded, the gripping psychological thrillerCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2017-2021 Lynn Steinson
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A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Easter Sunday, like Christmas and New Year’s Days, is unusual in that we can count on one thing – the supermarkets will be closed. Good Friday has, in recent years, escaped this consumer curfew and nowadays is very much like any other public holiday. It was not always so.

When I was a young girl Easter Sunday was just like any other Sunday. No shops, apart from the occasional sweet shop, were open – but Easter Monday was different to any other Monday of the year. Easter Monday was fun.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Easter Monday fun at Avenham Park, Preston

In the weeks before Easter a satisfying display of chocolate eggs, gifts from neighbours and family, accumulated in the front room. They were routinely counted as each new addition, in its gaudy box, was added to the top of the bookcase. On Easter Monday I would carefully choose a selection of the Cadbury’s, Rowntree’s or Terry’s eggs to take on the bus into Preston for a family day at Avenham Park.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Egg rolling, Avenham Park Preston, Easter Monday 2009

 

The park is a natural amphitheatre which slopes down to the River Ribble. I suspect we might have taken a picnic, but Easter Monday afternoon was all about one thing for me, and all the children in Preston who were also there with their families – chocolate.

As a brass band played and a steam engine shunted backwards and forwards over the railway bridge I would roll the glittery wrapped eggs down the hill and my cousins would roll them back up. Eggs which were divided in two and not stuck together were disappointing – flying apart in the air and losing their foil wrapper at the first throw. What was needed was a sealed egg which required some serious bouncing on the grassy hill before smashing, satisfyingly, into pieces. The manufacturers seemed to change their specification each year, so choosing the right eggs was always a risk.

I would like to remember these rituals as being performed on sunny afternoons but unfortunately they were often played to the accompaniment of a blustering wind or fine drizzle. As I got older we went for hikes to Brock Bottoms of Nicky Nook, instead, but we always took some chocolate eggs for rolling. I have rolled eggs in Essex, Norfolk and Yorkshire on Easter Monday. It’s a Preston tradition and continues on Avenham Park to this day, and wherever I am.

 

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Keith Allen, Darren Morfitt, Tim Booth and Nicholas Bailey
Manchester Passion 2016. BBC Photo


I have established some rituals of my own in recent years. I saw the Manchester Passion on television in 2006 and was spellbound. The city has always had a reputation for inventive TV. Granada was the flagship television company, but this ambitious live performance was broadcast by BBC3. The entire city centre was its location and members of the public were the supporting cast. Tim Booth of James was Judas and Bez, Tony Wilson and Chris Bisson had cameo roles. I found the You Tube video a few years ago and now watch it every Easter Sunday. LINK HERE

The originals of all the songs are by Manchester bands – from Joy Divison to Oasis and M People. You can listen to the playlist HERE

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Preston Passion. Good Friday 2012

Preston Passion. Good Friday 2012I had hoped to see something similar at the performance of the Passion at Preston Bus Station in 2012. Unfortunately, Fern Britton’s narration was no match for Keith Allen’s Pontius Pilate. Last year’s Manchester Passion in Cathedral Gardens was a traditional take with the cast dressed as if they had walked out of a traditional Christmas card. They were just missing the sheep. It was a worthy performance on a sunny day and attracted a large audience but the ambition of the 2006 version has yet to be surpassed.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Manchester Passion, Cathedral Gardens 2018

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester Passion

Manchester Passion 2017

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonegg-rolling-300x200 A Preston egg rolling ritual and a Manchester PassionCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Lynn Steinson

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It’s more than reading and writing

The literary influences which shaped my writing are varied – from the weekly cliff hanger in the schoolgirl comics of my childhood to the great ladies of detective fiction – Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. I loved James’ sleuth Cordelia Gray and always wished Christie had given Tuppence Cowley more mysteries to solve. I never guessed the ending of an Elizabeth George or a Ruth Rendell, but I never felt cheated either.Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncover-small-vengeance It's more than reading and writing

My influences extend beyond the crime/detective genre. I was hooked on Lionel Shriver’s ‘We need to talk about Kevin,’ engrossed in the twists and turns of the book and revelations which knocked me sideways – brilliant story-telling which pounds the emotions so powerfully I know I can never read it again. Audrey Niffinegger’s ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ never lost me as it jumped through space and time. I was entranced by every page of Kate Atkinson’s ‘Behind the Scenes at The Museum’. She writes with light humour, often juxtaposed against sadness and tragedy. The descriptions from the past reignited memories of my childhood and drew me into its pages. I had almost forgotten the plastic daffodils that came free with a brand of washing powder. I felt as if she was writing about my childhood.  Sometimes books we admire are chosen for us. Novelist Nicholas Royle recommended James Lasdun’s ‘The Horned Man’ as part of the reading list for MMU’s M.A. in Creative Writing.  I loved the tone of this novel, a compelling mix of humour and darkness. Unusually I have read it twice.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncover-small-vengeance It's more than reading and writing

The Horned Man by James Lasdun

We are a product of all our experiences, including all we have read – increasingly on social media – but also what we have watched in the cinema or on television, and even heard on the radio or itunes. So I also have to acknowledge influences beyond the written word. On television these include the quirky Ally McBeal and Alan Plater’s The Beiderbecke Affair. I liked the tone and pace of these programmes. Laurie Taylor’s Radio 4 ‘Thinking Allowed’  broadcast in 2013 reminded me again that I am also “something of a fan” of sociologist Erving Goffman. He  argued that society is like a theatre and that we are always performing our character, even rehearsing backstage to try to create the right impression.

In the psychological thriller, Deluded, my sleuths are Lisa Clarkson, a young advertising executive, and DI Calvini, a sexy Mancunian detective with Italian heritage. The main theatre is the pub quiz where the comedy of everday life is performed and from which emerges a dark, twisting story. Facebook is the tool used backstage to enhance the leading actress’s performance. It is a contemporary tale but not without some seventies nostalgia and a nod to the fairy tales and myths which permeated my childhood. I have mentioned before that music is the soundtrack to my life. Each chapter in ‘Deluded’ the name of a song title. The playlist for the Deluded chapters is here.

Download Deluded at The Kindle Store or buy the paperback  

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncover-small-vengeance It's more than reading and writing

Reviews

Here are some reviews from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.au

An intriguing read, with some excellent twists and turns. The members of a pub quiz team each have their own secrets and, as the novel develops, their secrets start to become bound up with each other. It also offers an interesting take on the way in which social media can be used to construct – or change – the ways others view us.

Extremely enjoyable and well written psychological thriller. Interesting characters with lots of twists and turns which kept me guessing until the end. Highly recommend this book.

This is a book that lures you in quickly – I wasn’t able to put it down till I finished it. Great suspense with interesting characters. I’d highly recommend it!

This book is a great read. A psychological thriller that draws you in from the first page and keeps you guessing until the very end. Join the members of the pub quiz team and discover all their secrets. Very well written and listen to the playlist on Spotify. I connected to this book on so many levels.

I am currently working on a sequel, again set in Manchester, but during a long hot summer. No, I’m not deluded.

 Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncover-small-vengeance It's more than reading and writingCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Lynn Steinson

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A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the Nymphs

It’s Tuesday night at The Sun pub quiz.

‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson,’ Judith said, without hesitation. ‘I have a painting by John Waterhouse which is inspired by that poem, the Victorians loved all things Arthurian.’

She might have added Greek and Roman as well. The Victorians were steeped in mythology. In my psychological thriller, Deluded, Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott is displayed in a heavy gold Victorian frame at the bottom of the stairwell in Judith’s house. When Lisa sees it she is not impressed.

A red-haired woman dressed in cream medieval-style robes, her face a deathly pallor, was staring out of the painting as if in a trance. She was sitting in what looked like a grand canoe, drifting down a river.

‘Exquisite,’ said Lisa, dryly, ‘but very contrived, staged.’

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the Nymphs

The Lady of Shalott — John Waterhouse

Waterhouse was not to Lisa’s taste. It appears that this aversion is also shared by Manchester Art Gallery’s curator of the exhibition themed In Pursuit of Beauty. She has described the collection as a cause for ‘embarrassment’. The curator decided to withdraw Waterhouse’s celebrated Hylas and the Nymphs from the display.

I have a special interest as a print of this painting has adorned my bathroom wall for many years, and I often visit the Gallery to ponder the Pre-Raphaelite  collection – I use the term loosely –  primarily to look at this picture. A Facebook posting revealed that the painting is well-loved by my female friends – one also has a print, displayed in her dining room. She loves it because the nymphs have ‘mystery and power’. I share this feeling. These mysterious young women have the upper hand, after all the temptresses are about to abduct Hylas – a rare case of the depiction of assertive women.

In the furore that followed the removal of Hylas and the Nymphs the Gallery’s action was justified as a means to prompt a ‘conversation’. I was in the museum on the Thursday following the picture’s withdrawal. The only suggestion of a ‘conversation’ evident was the curator’s tentative scanning of the public’s comments which were stuck to the now empty wall. The staff in the hall were not prompting actual conversations with any passing visitors.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the NymphsBy Saturday the painting had been returned. Although longer, typed arguments have been added to the mélange of post-it notes, it was still difficult to decipher many of the penciled comments. Let’s face it, a post-it note does not give too much scope to express an opinion, never mind a conversation. The curator had promised the painting would be probably displayed again but ‘hopefully contextualized’. That new context seems to be a sea of yellow post-it notes. Opposite Hylas and the Nymphs there is a portrait of a stern bare-breasted woman. A post-it is stuck to the wall next to it. ‘Don’t let them take me!’

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the Nymphs

Hylas And The Water Nymphs. Henrietta Rae (1859-1928). .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever the Gallery’s motivation, removing a celebrated painting was misguided, smacking of censorship – and of all the paintings to choose it seems odd to select one of empowered women, if their rationale was based on the Victorian’s objectification of women. This Greek myth was a subject which appealed to both male and female painters. There is another portrayal of Hylas and the Water Nymphs painted fourteen years later by Henrietta Rae. However, it is only Waterhouse’s nymphs which, when Googled now, are associated with the headline ‘soft-porn painting’ and ‘offensive nymphs’.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the Nymphs

We can all read into the painting what we will, based on what we see, and informed by our knowledge of Greek mythology. I don’t think about the imminent demise of Hylas when I see it, just the women entrancing him. Other commentators have described it as the Naiads’ abduction or murder of a gay man – Hylas being the lover of Heracles. However, the mystery of the disappearance of Hylas was never solved. In my imagination he lived happily among the water lilies with the nymphs. In the end we can all see the same thing and see it differently, and that is partly the point of my novel, Deluded.

DELUDED, the gripping psychological thriller, is now available on Amazon.co.uk.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the Nymphs

 

Buy Deluded now!

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the Nymphs

 

 Guilt by Lynn Steinsonshalott-300x230 A Deluded Conversation: Manchester Art Gallery and the NymphsCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Lynn Steinson

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