John Simons

Life in the UK Complete Study Guide and Exam Practice 2020 Edition

David Malcolm

Gill Davies

Critical Essays on Ronald Firbank, English Novelist, 1886-1926

This is the first collection of essays devoted to the work of this much under-rated and important twentieth-century writer. The essays engage with some of the variety of Warner's output - her short fiction, letters and fantasy writing - as well as her major novels. This collection includes a range of approaches to the work of a writer who has much to say to contemporary readers and whose work, long appreciated by feminist readers in particular, is now being considered by academic critics and a wider audience.

Critical Essays on Sylvia Townsend Warner, English Novelist, 1893-1978

Chapbooks formed the staple reading matter of ordinary people during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries; they were also read by children of the gentry. They included fiction, almanacs, religious guidance and radical political tracts, and were available throughout the British Isles and in colonial America. The six chapbook romances in this volume all derive from tales of chivalric adventure and courtly love which were current in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. They provide a fascinating window on the mental world of rural England and America before the advent of mass media. No previous attempt has been made to produce the full text of a selection of chapbooks for the modern reader; they have remained the province of specialist bibliographers and antiquarians.

Six Tales from the Popular Literature of Pre-industrial England

Guy of Warwick and Other Chapbook Romances

DescriptionThis book is one mans experience of his time incarcerated in the prison system of this country. Basically it is a diatribe against the system, what it does to human beings and how it affects the lives of those unfortunate enough to have been in the same predicament. The injustice of it all and the corruption that is so rife within the system but no one wants to acknowledge or talk about. Lots of books have been written on this subject but I have tried to take a slightly different slant on the story and go through some of the different types of people we have locked away in our prisons and their plights. We are always trying to find someone else to blame when we come across a bad situation instead of taking a good look at ourselves. This is the attitude taken through the whole of society, from the top to the bottom. Billions of pounds of taxpayers money is spent on trying to find solutions to our problems hence jails full of people who have no right in being there in the first place. The people that are responsible for this situation are the ones making the laws, you cannot fart in public these days without some individual proclaiming him or herself as the fart police and giving you a fine, madness, the whole kit and caboodle. I have not produced an answer to these problems, although I know there is one, I have merely tried to point out the madness of our prison system. The second part of this story is about getting out of prison and the changes I have noticed since my release, which are considerable and quite unbelievable in some cases. About the AuthorI am John Harry Simons and was born in Berwick on Tweed on 22nd August 1952, my dad was a sailor and my mum a housewife and mother, I have a younger brother called Andy. We lived in Wooler in Northumberland for the first 6 years of my life and then moved to Gravesend in Kent. My mum became a schoolteacher and my dad carried on sailing for a while. I ended up going to the H.M.S. Worcester nautical training college, a big square rigger moored at Greenhithe on the River Thames, where I learned to become a navigating officer in the Merchant Navy. I did my apprenticeship in the Merchant Navy and then left to pursue other ways of living and eventually got married and had 2 children, both of whom are now over 30 years old. I was divorced in 1982 and have had a very colourful career since then. I became a single parent when my son came to live with me in 1986 and was one until he went to university some six years later. I eventually got caught up in the world of cocaine smuggling and was caught in 2002 and sentenced to 8 years for my efforts. I have now been at liberty for just over a year and am trying my hand at writing, a skill which I picked up whilst at Her Majesty's Prisons.

Prison and Beyond

DescriptionThis is a true account of a cocaine smuggler in the 21st century and what it was like to be involved in this high risk business. It is one man's story from beginning to end but there are hundreds of people languishing in prisons all over the world that have been on the smuggling gig. It is not a long story but it follows our man through the mayhem and madness of the smuggling world in a much laid back manner. This is not the guns and violence type of story but it is honest and heartfelt and whatever your view on the DRUG scene the author has tried to "humanise" this story. It may take you on a few twists and turns on the journey but it is all relevant and hopefully you will reach the conclusion with a good feeling. About the AuthorJohn Simons was born in Berwick on Tweed 22nd August 1952 and lived in Wooler in Northumberland for the first 6 years of his life. His dad was a sailor but when he left the sea he moved the family to Gravesend in Kent, John as well. John was educated at The H.M.S. Worcester nautical training college, a proper English "Public School" with all the posh folk to go along with it. There he learned how to become an officer and a gentleman and the rudiments of shipboard life and of navigation and everything else nautical. He then went on to become an apprentice navigating officer (cadet in short) with The Scottish Ship Management and to John this was manna from heaven. He was in his words "being paid to travel the world and chase women" and had the best job "in the world"! John soon found he was suffering under an illusion and on the long trips across the Pacific he would ruminate over the whys and wherefores of life and began to understand that there was more to this life than met the eye. After a lot of thought John packed in his career with the Merchant Navy in order to "find out what it is all about." He went to live in a commune in Lancashire and really "dropped out, tuned in and turned on," as they used to say but it wasn't in the hippie lifestyle that he found some sort of fulfilment. What was bothering John was the same thing that bothers all of us at some point in our lives, "why am I here"? He needed answers and to that end he went looking, without knowing what it was he needed to find or where to find it. In the course of his search he came across a young Indian man called Maharaji who said he could show him who he was, not just pretty words but an experience. He revealed him a thing we call Knowledge and from that moment on the answer was evident for John, he had searched the world only to find what he was looking for was already within him. John went on to get married and have 2 children both of whom are now in their thirties, one is in Australia and the other in Frome in Somerset. He split from his wife early on in the marriage but became a single parent with his son while the daughter stayed with her mum. John has had a long and varied career and has had a lot of fun doing it all, whether it is messing about with cars or chopping down trees or being put upon by this insane system we have to live with. One thing John can't abide is hypocrisy which is all we have to put up with from politicians and other so called luminaries we have spouting forth their opinions with gay abandon while the rest of us have to suffer their greed and relentless legislation putting all the power into the wrong hands.John's mum died last year and left him a bit of cash so he bought a plot of land in France and he hopes to retire there at some point but at present John is currently looking after his dad down in deepest Hampshire while trying to get to his land in France whenever the opportunity presents itself. John started writing purely by accident when he was asked to write a "disclosure" while in prison and the disclosure went on for a while, about 40,000 words to be precise and it ended up being published as Prison and Beyond, his first attempt but not his last, this is testament to that.

Going Against the Grain

A timely reconsideration of the author of 771e Once and Future King, whose work is still deserving of serious critical attention.

John Simons

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