Nottinghamshire writers

Introduction

A short introduction to writers living in Nottinghamshire, or who were born here and keep up their local connections. Many of the writers have their own websites, or have further information on the websites of their main publishers.

Because of space we have only included writers whose work is published nationally, and we have excluded self-publication. You will find others on the regional literature website www.literatureeastmidlands.co.uk.

The first list comprises living writers, the second includes dead writers, including those from our literary heritage.

This list was last updated in September 2008. We would be pleased to include further updates or to hear from writers who should be included. Please e-mail: ross.bradshaw@nottscc.gov.uk

Most of the books mentioned are available to borrow from Nottinghamshire Libraries and can be ordered from bookshops. Some are available also in large print or on audio. The best source for local books is currently www.nottinghambooks.co.uk

C.J. Allen

Clive Allen has developed a particular skill in winning poetry competitions. He is also involved in the magazines Poetry Nottingham and Staple. His first full collection of poetry is a lot more witty than the title of New and Selected Poems (Leafe Press) might suggest.

Catharine Arnold

Taking time out from being a Nottingham City Councillor, Catharine Arnold has written two popular history books, Necropolis: London and its dead (Pocket Books) and Bedlam: London and its mad (Simon and Schuster). I wonder what subject could make up a trilogy... The author started off as a novelist, but seems to have found a niche and success here.

Elizabeth Baguley

After years of waiting Elizabeth Baguley seems to be on an unstoppable train, with her children's picture books, her latest being Little Pip and the Rainbow Wish (Little Tiger). I do prefer the title of the German edition though, Pippo fliegt zum Regenbogen. As well as writing, this author is a storyteller and organises the children's programme at Lowdham Book Festival.

www.elizabeth-baguley.co.uk

Roy Bainton

Self confessed "jobbing writer from Mansfield", Roy Bainton mostly writes sleeve notes, commercial journalism and anything that can help towards the mortgage. He has also written several books, including a history of brewing in Mansfield and The Long Patrol: the British in Germany 1945-1990 (Mainstream).

David Belbin

David Belbin was the best selling children’s crime fiction writer in the UK in the 1990s with his “The Beat” series of young adult fiction novels. He has a reputation for writing about controversial issues in the lives of young adults. His Love Lessons (Scholastic), for example, concerned an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and pupil, but his best selling book was a manual on Ebay. Recently he has written some books for reluctant readers published by Barrington Stoke. David Belbin runs the MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University, where he also organised a national conference on young adult fiction.

www.davidbelbin.com

Michael Billig

Primarily an academic writer on social psychology, he has also written more popular books on the royal family, on Jews in rock'n'roll and a major critique of nationalism, Banal Nationalism (Sage).

Stephen Booth

Stephen Booth cut his writing teeth as assistant editor of the Worksop Guardian and other regional newspapers but the success of his first published crime fiction novel, Black Dog (HarperCollins) enabled him to turn to fiction writing full time. Since then he has published a book a year. All his books are set in the Peak District and all are based on the lives of the Derbyshire detective Ben Cooper and his uneasy relationship with his superior officer Diane Fry. The backdrop of the Peak District is the other constant character in his novels, the most recent of which is Dying to Sin. The Peak District tourist board has issued a Stephen Booth guide to help visitors find his sites, though dead bodies are less common in fact than fiction. In 2008 Stephen Booth became a Reading Champion for Nottinghamshire Libraries.

www.stephen-booth.com

Clare Brown

Clare Brown formerly worked at the Poetry Book Society and retains close links to the poetry world. She is the joint editor of Don’t Ask Me What I Mean: poets in their own words (Picador). She is mostly known however as a novelist, with her Bloomsbury novels The Creation Myths and Dream Laboratory making her one of the few people occupying that small space between commercial and literary fiction.

Adrian Buckner

Now living in Derbyshire, Adrian Buckner squeezes into this list as he is still editor of Poetry Nottingham and was the one and only Nottinghamshire Poet Laureate. His first full collection is Contains Mild Peril (Five Leaves).

Derrick Buttress

Derrick Buttress was primarily known as a prolific small press versifier, of significant talent, until his two autobiographies appeared – Broxtowe Boy and Music While You Work (both Shoestring, which also published his poetry collection Waiting for the Invasion). The first of these covered his childhood years, the second his time on the shop floor in tailoring firms in Nottingham’s Lace Market.

Anthony Cartwright

Recent arrival in the County, this author brought with him a sack of awards for his Black Country dialect first novel The Afterglow (Tindal Street).

Elizabeth Chadwick

Elizabeth Chadwick is one of Nottinghamshire's best-selling writers. She writes historical fiction and prides herself on background research. At her talks you can be pretty sure you will feel the weight of chain mail. Her books are by no means light, and you learn a lot about medieval medicine, or the lack of it, and feel the heat of battle. The Time of Singing (Sphere) is her latest, but you might also want to read The Champion (Sphere) or The Conquest (Sphere), my favourites. The Scarlet Lion (Little, Brown) is on my must read list.

www.elizabethchadwick.com

John Stuart Clark

Primarily a cartoonist for UNICEF and others, he is also a travel writer whose books include After the Gold Rush (Five Leaves).

www.brickbats.co.uk

Susanna Clarke

Does not make much of her Nottinghamshire background, but we count her... Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Bloomsbury) could be described as fantasy but a lot more complicated than that. But allow some time, this novel is over 1,000 pages.

www.jonathanstrange.com

Ken Coates

Former Member of the European Parliament; founder of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation; founder of Spokesman Books. Author of many (and I mean many) books of political polemic. Together with Richard Silburn was the author of Poverty: the forgotten Englishman (Penguin/Spokesman) report on the old St Ann's in Nottingham.

Stephan Collishaw

It has all gone quiet – too quiet – with this writer who is concentrating on his teaching career for the moment, after two good novels. Both Amber and The Last Girl were East European novels, the latter set in war-time and modern Lithuania, the former set among Russian Army conscripts in Afghanistan.

Paul Cookson

He rather gives the game away with his I'd Rather be a Footballer (Macmillan), a children's writer best known for his poetry, including his edited anthologies. Paul Cookson is particularly well known in north Nottinghamshire, where he has probably performed in every school to every generation of primary school children for a decade or more.

www.paulcooksonpoet.co.uk

Michael Cox

Father of Tom Cox, and the author of many illustrated books for older children. His Johnnie Catbiscuit and the Tentacles of Doom (Egmont) is typical of his Catbiscuit series, all with wacky titles, and his sense of humour.

www.michaelcox.info

Tom Cox

Easy to see where he gets his humour from... Now living in London, but his Nice Jumper (Black Swan) is a riff on his teenage years as a golf nut in Nottinghamshire.

www.tom-cox.com

Anthony Cropper

Author of Jack and Sal and Weatherman (both Route), Anthony has done quite a lot of work regionally with readers' groups, and his next book draws on their advice and that experience.

Nick Curtis

See Graham Edwards.

Alison LR Davies

A rare Nottingham writer of dark fantasy/horror, her books include King of the Birds (bluechrome).

www.alisonlrdavies.com

Roberta Dewa

Roberta Dewa was the author of three historical novels published by Robert Hale in the early 1980s, the last of which was The Shadow King. These days she is working in other genres and her work crops up regularly in the small presses, especially Staple. Part of her work in progress, a memoir of growing up in Wilford appeared in Staple 68 - which was an East Midlands special issue.

www.robertadewa.co.uk

Sue Dymoke

Once the poetry editor of John Harvey's Slowdancer magazine, Sue Dymoke has written and contributed to a number of academic books on education. Her most recent collection of poetry is Reading Matters (Shoestring).

Michael Eaton

Not to be confused with the Christian writer of the same name, Michael (Mick) Eaton is a screenwriter with several books to his name including the BFI Classic Chinatown.

Rowena Edlin-White

Author of many pamphlets and booklets on spinning and dying, Rowena Edlin-White has also edited spiritual books including Dancing on Mountains: an anthology of women's spiritual writings (Zondervan). She is currently working on a guide to Nottingham's literary history.

Graham Edwards

His early books were very much for the sword and sorcery fans, Graham Edwards "Stone" trilogy (Voyager) made his name but lately he has taken to crime, or rather Black Star Crime with two fast paced thrillers, the first being Runaway Minister. Just to confuse library staff everywhere these books are published under the name Nick Curtis. Rumour has it that he is working on a new fantasy project though. That's Graham Edwards, not Nick Curtis. I think.

www.grahamedwardsonline.co.uk

Vicki Feaver

Long gone from Nottinghamshire, but she was born here. Her contemporary poems have more than a hint of a darker side. Her latest being The Book of Blood (Cape).

Kevin Fegan

Primarily a playwright for stage, Kevin Fegan has published several book length dramatic poems including Matey Boy (Iron Press) about the Barrow Shipyards and Let Your Left Hand Sing (Five Leaves), stories of migration to the East Midlands.

www.kevinfegan.co.uk

Raymond Flynn

After 26 years as a policeman, Ray Flynn turned to a life of crime writing with six novels in the Eddathorpe series. The last, published in 2000, was Over My Dead Body (NEL) which was set in Nottingham.

Jacqueline Gabbitas

Already something of a veteran of the small press world, her publication Mid Lands (Hearing Eye) draws on her Worksop background and dialect.

www.jaquelinegabbitas.net

John Goodridge

Academic at Nottingham Trent University, has written mostly on the "peasant poet" John Clare and other working class rural writers.

Ray Gosling

Now in the "national treasure" league. Ray Gosling has primarily been a radio journalist. In recent years his story of falling on hard times brought him back to the public eye. He was the author of Sum Total (reprinted by Pomona) and Personal Copy - biographies of his early years in Leicester and Nottingham respectively. His papers were bought by Nottingham Trent University.

Gwen Grant

Gwen Grant has written childrens books for different ages, but she is particularly interesting as some of her novels for older children specifically talk about the experience of working class children in north Nottinghamshire.

Her Private Keep Out has been in print for 30 years, and is part of a trilogy that includes the main character going on hunger strike against bad treatment at school. The last of the series (One Way Only) retells what it was like for a child to return to her home area with a “southern” accent. A later book, The Revolutionary’s Daughter is set at the time of the 1984 miners’ strike.

www.gwengrant.co.uk

Duncan Hamilton

Former assistant editor of Nottingham Evening Post, his Provided You Don't Kiss Me (HarperPerennial) described his twenty years reporting on Nottingham Forest, or rather twenty years of Brian Clough who took Hamilton under his wing as a young journalist.

Robert Harris

Like Susanna Clark, Robert Harris is not hugely known as a Nottinghamshire writer, but there's no getting away. His political thrillers include Archangel set in Russia and Fatherland (both Arrow) set in Germany are equally impressive "what if?" post-Stalin and post-Hitler novels.

John Harvey

John Harvey now lives in London but his series of Resnick crime novels is set in Nottingham, where he lived for many years. He often returns, being a Notts County supporter. The Resnick series is now in double figures, the first being Lonely Hearts, the most recent being Cold in Hand. Resnick is a jazz loving Polish detective, with a strong line in sandwiches. As well as the Resnick series Harvey has another key series, based on the character Frank Elder, from Cornwall. Since leaving teaching he has worked as a full time writer for over 30 years. He has adapted novels for radio has published poetry and regularly reads fiction and a little poetry with the jazz band Second Nature. In the past he cut his teeth as a writer of Westerns and he has always wrote commercially. One of his recent books was a rare young adult fiction novel (Nick’s Blues, Five Leaves) which he described as “in some ways one of the best things I’ve written. John Harvey was presented with the Cartier Diamond Dagger by the Crime Writers Association, a special award for a lifetime’s achievement in crime writing.

www.mellotone.co.uk

Dominic Head

Dominic Head is the author of a critical book on Ian McEwan (Manchester University Press), though not critical in the sense he likes his work, and The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction 1950-2000 (CUP). So, he reads a lot then...

Tony Hill

As a music fan, Tony Hill will be well aware of the description "one hit wonder" - which as yet he is with his excellent If the Kids are United (Phoenix). We live in hope for another book. This one was about growing up in Jacksdale as a Manchester United fan, but it was really about the decline of Jacksdale during the Margaret Thatcher premiership. Since you ask, the title comes from a Sham 69 song.

Mick Jackson

Not a local, but one of his books The Underground Man (Faber) - which was short-listed for the Booker Prize - is a novel about the more than eccentric William John Cavendish Bentinck-Scott, Duke of Portland who built a mass of tunnels under his Welbeck Estate south of Worksop.

www.mickjackson.com

Judith Jesch

The author of a number of scholarly works and regional studies on Vikings, as well as the more popular Women in the Viking Age (Boydell Press).

Clare Littleford

Clare Littleford is one of a swathe of Nottinghamshire crime writers. Her two psychological novels, Death Duty and Beholden (both Pocket Books) were set in Nottingham, drawing on useful experience as a Council worker. Her Crime Express novella, The Quarry, appeared in 2008.

www.clarelittleford.net

Stephen Lowe

A number of Stephen Lowe's plays have been published, including Touched (Nick Hern), which described the life of working class women in Nottingham in the hundred days between Victory in Europe and Victory in Japan.

www.stephenlowe.co.uk

John Lucas

After eight collections of poetry, numerous academic books and many years running the literary press Shoestring, John Lucas won the Authors’ Club travel prize for his 92 Acharnon Street (Eland) in 2008. The book describes his year in Greece in 1984, his encounters with fellow writers, a chaotic University and the fall out from the recent fascist dictatorship. Lucas is a great admirer and promoter of the work of John Clare, Charles Dickens, Ivor Gurney, DH Lawrence (especially his poetry) and has written books on all of them. His latest project is an scholarly book explaining his grandmother’s folksy sayings.

Jon McGregor

Jon McGregor had the career start others about which authors dream. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury), reached the long-list of the Booker Prize in 2002, the only first novel on the list. He was also the youngest contender. The novel went on to win the Betty Trask prize and the Somerset Maugham award. The book is set in an unnamed northern city (not Nottingham!) on the last day of summer. None of the people in the book have names, and the punctuation is unusual, and while most people love the book a minority hate it! His second novel, So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury), is set partly in northern Scotland, partly in Ireland and partly in Coventry, the main character being a museum curator. McGregor was instrumental in setting up the Nottingham Writers’ Studios for professional writers.

Jenny McLeod

One of the few Black writers locally to have published professionally, Jenny McLeod is primarily a playwright. Her play Rasing Fires was published by The Bush Theatre while her late 90s novel Stuck Up a Tree was based around the Black community in St Ann's in Nottingham.

Eve Makis

Eve Makis, like Stephen Booth, is a Nottinghamshire Libraries Reading Champion. Her background is also in journalism, but she worked as a journalist in Cyprus. Eve was brought up in West Bridgford, very much part of the local Greek Cypriot community. She lived above the family fish and chip shop. This background is reflected in her novels, the first of which was Eat, Drink and Be Married (Transworld). In her third, Land of the Golden Apple (Tansworld) things get a bit darker, where an idyllic seeming small Cypriot village contains some, well, not very nice things.

www.evemakis.com

Stanley Middleton

Now in his 80s, Stanley Middleton provided Nottinghamshire with its only Booker Prize winner (or to be more exact, in this case a joint winner), with Holiday (Hutchinson) in 1974. Many people consider his best book to be Harris’s Requiem, recently re-issued by Trent Editions. This book was based round the classical music scene within the mining community – which gives a clue to when the book was set. His books – and he is still being published at about a book a year – are set in the mythical Beechnall, Nottingham by another name.

Nicola Monaghan

The Killing Jar (Vintage) was Nicola Monaghan’s first book, set on the Broxtowe Estate in Nottingham, where she used to live.

Her book is written in Nottingham dialect, and it was something of a coup to persuade her publisher that would be possible. The Killing Jar, however, is set in the seamier side of the estate – a world of ASBOs, drugs and violence. Nicola herself celebrates other parts of estate life – the vibrant culture and self help of working class life – but not in this book. Her second novel, Starfishing, by contrast is set among high flying City types. Though drugs put in an appearance again and the opening chapter confusing the rave scene with the trading floor is very deliberate. Monaghan works part time at the National Academy of Writing at Birmingham City University. She has also written one novella, The Okinawa Dragon (Crime Express).

www.nicolamonaghan.co.uk

Peter Mortimer

Long relocated and assimilated into life in the north east, where he is a well known figure. Mortimer has written many books for children and adults, though he is now mainly a playwright. He was taught locally by Stanley Middleton.

www.petermortimer.co.uk

Julie Myerson

Julie Myerson was born locally and brought up around Lowdham and Caythorpe, the setting for her first (and in those villages quite controversial) novel Sleepwalking (Picador). She has written several books including the novel Something Might Happen (Cape), about the after effects of a child murder in a small seaside town in Suffolk and the non-fiction Home: the story of everyone who ever lived in our house (Flamingo).

Henry Normal

Clifton Estate boy made good. After many years of performing his off beat poetry - a number of volumes were published by AK Press, including The Dream Ticket - Henry Normal turned away from that life and now writes comedy with Steve Coogan. A sad loss.

David Peace

In this list because of his novel The Dammed Utd, it is a novel, based on the early footballing career of Brian Clough, prior to Nottingham Forest. Another novel based on fact, GB84, also has some local relevance being based on the miners' strike of that year.

Nigel Pickard

A poet, but also the author of one novel, confusingly called One (Bookcase Editions), which is about - if novels can be described as being "about" - autism.

Helena Pielichaty

PIERRE-LI-HATTY, since you ask. Helena has written many books for older children since 1998, when she started with Vicious Circle. Her books have gone up and down the age range (all with OUP) and they include The After School Club series. Her latest book, Accidental Friends, based around four sixteen year olds, is towards the older end of her spectrum.

www.helena-pielichaty.com

Kat Pomfret

After her Paradise Jazz (Snowbooks) in 2005 things have gone quiet. Her first novel was set in the Deep South of America and is best read with that accent buzzing in your ears.

Pascale Quiviger

Perhaps it says something about Nottinghamshire that Pascale Quiviger's career seems exotic! Her best known book won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in her native Canada, in the French section, being then translated into English as The Perfect Circle (Cormorant).

Tony Ross

Newly arrived in Southwell, Tony Ross is well known as an illustrator, but he has written and illustrated flying solo in books like I Want My Potty (Kane/Miller), which was unaccountably missed from the Booker short list.

Miranda Seymour

Miranda Seymour has written several novels, but these days she is mostly known as a biographer. Her book on Mary Shelley and Ottoline Morrell were well received but the book that caught the public’s imagination – or at least the local public’s imagination was In My Father’s House: elegy for an obsessive love (Pocket). The love in question was by her late father’s desperate love for Thrumpton Hall, the “house” that he inherited. There was a lot more than that to her father, not least his belated turn towards rather homo-erotic relationships with bikers.

www.mirandaseymour.com

Alan Sillitoe

Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Monday Morning (HarperCollins) was published in 1958 and is still his best known book. The book – and later film, with Albert Finney – is based round the rough and ready Arthur Seaton, a swaggering, drinking and womanising Nottingham factory worker. This is the Nottingham working class novel par excellance, from the days when there were factories worth the name in the town of Raleigh, Players and Boots. The title story of his collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (HarperCollins) was also made into a hugely popular film, and Alan Sillitoe became lionised by the literary world with Stan Barstow and others as representing a new wave of regional working class writers. Sillitoe went on to write many more books, including poetry, travel writing and an autobiography, Life Without Armour (HarperCollins), but is still best known for his early work. In 2008 he was awarded Freedom of the City of Nottingham – the first writer to achieve this.

Shirley Smith

Author of several regency romances, all published by Robert Hale including A Particular Circumstance. Shirley is also the author - and we just can't quite remember her pseudonym - of several erotic books published by Black Lace.

Jenny Swann

Five-a-day Pro - Convert Your Kids to Fruit and Veg (Southgate) is one of this author's schoolbooks, but she is also a poet, her full collection being Soft Landings (Flambard). Jenny Swann is also the editor at Candlestick Press, a Nottingham publisher.

Megan Taylor

How We Were Lost is Megan Taylor's debut novel (Flame), a story of two young girls gone missing. Strong female teenager tries to find the truth.

Deboragh Tyler-Bennett

The author of hundreds of poems and short stories (many of which have local settings) in the little magazine scene, Deboragh Tyler-Bennett edited The Coffee House for some time, but her claim to fame - or at least presence here - is due to her poetry collection, Clark Gable in Mansfield (King's England Press). The title sequence describes her family's memories of when that Hollywood star came to Mansfield. Is it really true? Read the book, or check it out yourself.

Phil Whitaker

Phil Whitaker crops up here for one only of his four novels, The Face (Atlantic) which was published in 2002 and is set in Nottingham, where he studied to be a doctor. The Face is a literary thriller based on secrets and lies found out when a woman returns to her home town to find out how her retired detective father died. Shame Phil only passed through…

www.philwhitaker.co.uk

Amanda Whittington

Several of Amanda's plays have appeared at Nottingham Playhouse before going on tour, and several of them have been published by Nick Hern, including Satin'n'Steel and Be My Baby.

www.amandawhittington.com

Barrie Williams

A former editor of the Nottingham Evening Post, his Ink in the Blood (Woodfield) could have done with a sub but is essential reading for anyone wanting to explore recent history in Nottinghamshire, written about a time when the Post sold 120,000 copies daily.

Nick Wood

One of the new wave of local playwrights. He has written several plays for the Nottingham Playhouse Roundabout (theatre in education section, and one for the main stage). His plays are also produced abroad, particularly in Germany. One play so far has been published, Warrior Square (Aurora Metro).

www.nickwood.org

Gregory Woods

Gregory Woods achieved his fifteen minutes worth of fame when appointed Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University. Warnings of the downfall of western civilisation in consequence proved to be slightly exaggerated. Woods is the author of the scholarly A History of Gay Literature: the male tradition (Yale) but is better known for his four collections of poetry from Carcanet, the latest of which is Quidnunc. Woods is famed for his attention to poetic form.

www.gregorywoods.co.uk

John Worthern

Although John Worthern has written other scholarly non-fiction books, his major biography of DH Lawrence: the life of an outsider (Penguin) makes him essential for this list. There have been many books on Lawrence (including by the late ex-Nottingham writer Philip Callow) but this is the one for now.

Keith Wright

At one time Keith Wright doubled as a serving policeman and a crime writer, but nothing new has appeared for some years now. Try his One Oblique One (Constable) or Addressed to Kill. Local setting.

Not quite claimable but almost...

Ex-residents who did significant literary work when passing through and who retain some local connections: Andy Croft (poet); Tom Paulin (poet, academic); Blake Morrison (novelist).

And the following who work in the County or are involved in local literary societies or activity: Cathy Grindrod (poet); Jeremy Duffield (poet); Mahendra Solanki (poet); Graham Joyce (horror novelist).

Malcolm Bradbury

Identified very much in the public mind with his UEA creative writing course in Norwich, this novelist (The History Man is his best known) reminds us of his Nottinghamshire past in Liar's Landscape: collected writing from a storyteller's life (Picador).

Samuel Butler

Tops the list of great Victorian novelists born in Langar. His utopian novel Erewhon – spell it backwards – and the posthumous Way of All Flesh are his best known books, available in various editions.

Lord Byron

“Mad, bad and dangerous to know”, but enough about me. Byron is famous locally for his Newstead Abbey and burial in Hucknall, a good reason to take the tram to its terminus. A writer probably known more for his life now than his writing, so why not read Fiona MacCarthy’s Lord Byron: life and legend (Penguin). Byron’s own books – including Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan are available in many editions.

Helen Cresswell

Popular children's writer. Her many books include the long Bagthorpe series. Several of her books were made into TV series including Moondial and The Secret World of Polly Flint, which was set in Rufford and Wellow.

Graham Greene

We'd be hard pushed to claim Greene as a Nottinghamshire writer, but his brief time working on the now defunct Nottingham Guardian here was enough to give him a local setting for Gun for Sale, filmed, confusingly as Gun for Hire.

Hilda Lewis

Known mostly for her historical novels, many first published with cover designs by the Nottingham artist Evelyn Gibbs, her children’s novel The Ship that Flew is back in print with Oxford. Indeed – some of her historical novels are again available, but sadly with modern covers. One buried in the vaults is Penny Lace, the story of the eponymous Mr Penny, who rose from the shop floor of the lace trade to be an imaginative and cruel employer and businessman.

DH Lawrence

Well, he had mixed feelings about Nottinghamshire, but wrote many great novels around Eastwood, and poetry, and plays, and short stories. His great poem “The Snake” is probably his best known poem, Lady Chatterley’s Lover his best known novel, as a result of the famous obscenity trial. Then there’s The Rainbow, Women in Love… and lots more are kept in print by Penguin. But his paintings are worth a miss. Lawrence is still a controversial figure in Eastwood.

Frank Palmer

A former Daily Mirror journalist, Frank Palmer wrote an astonishing fourteen crime novels between 1992 and 1999. Many - including Red Gutter (Constable) were set locally or in Lincolnshire.

Cecil Roberts

Thousands of people have attended bookish events in the Cecil Roberts Room in the Central Library in Nottingham, but probably only a handful have read the once prolific novelist and autobiographer's work. Roberts was in his prime prior to WWII, also editing the Nottingham Journal in the 20s. His books are not easy for modern tastes.

Michael Standen

Initially a novelist, his four adult and one childrens books included Start Somewhere, a Nottingham-based novel about class and schooling, which came out in 1963. Later poetry took over and his last collection was Leaves at Night: new and selected poems (Shoestring).

Geoffrey Trease

In a long writing career Trease wrote well over a hundred books for children, many featuring strong female characters as he wanted his books to appeal to everyone. As a socialist he also wanted his books to get away from the jingoist colouring damaging so many children's books of his day. A handful of books are still in print, his first novel Bows Against the Barons (the Marxist version of Robin Hood) was published in 1934 and re-issued in 2004 (Young Spitfire).

Dorothy Whipple

Persephone Books has re-issued several of Dorothy Whipple's books, including They Knew Mister Knight, which became a Nottingham-based film, now rarely shown. Whipple's novels were of a time when middle-class people had servants and businesses. Good though.

Leslie Williamson

Leslie – known to all as Les – Williamson made a part-time living as a Robert Maxwell look-a-like, something he did not boast about. The author of several books, the best of which was Jobey. This book, set in the Nottinghamshire coal fields in the 20s, was written just before the big mining strike of 1984 and is now rather forgotten. It is worth finding, due to its keen understanding, and little romanticising, of the mining community in which it was set.

Not quite claimable as Nottinghamshire...

...but worth mentioning are the late Arnold Rattenbury - a poet who did some fantastic exhibitions at the Castle Art Gallery including one on "Young Bert" (DH Lawrence); Vernon Scannell, boxing poet once of Beeston.