Fined Four Pounds, Licence Removed

About the Book

Here is a set of tales that are as refreshing as they are revealing. They begin in an ancient, blizzard-torn farmhouse in England's West Country at the height of the Second World War, and they end 60 years later beside an Aboriginal campfire in the Northern Territory of Australia.

These 22 tales take us on an intimate journey through the life of an ordinary individual. Yet the talented style of their telling, with their numerous connecting threads of pathos, serendipity, music, adventure, religious curiosity, comedy, horses and high drama, draws the reader onwards inexorably and irrisistably.

In this, his first book, Alistair Brooks provides us with an absorbing and notable autobiographical achievement. For his is a broad and colourful canvas portraying his very personal voyage of self-discovery, and the influences and opportunities that have wrought the many changes in his life.

The tales leave one with the feeling his life has been everything but ordinary, and that he has enjoyed his living of it immensely. A rare claim these days. Compelling reading!

About the Author

Alistair Brooks was born on a farm in England's West Country during the darkest days of World War II. His reverence for all living things and his deeply intuitive approach to life, he attributes to his rural beginnings. He suffered badly from asthma in his early years, but discovered at a young age that this affliction could be beaten by physical activity. His great love of the outdoors, and his later passion for rock climbing and mountaineering, and always being fit and strong in mind and body, became his secret weapons against his asthma.

Being mildly dyslectic, but unknowingly so, his achievements at school were not praiseworthy. But this changed dramatically when, after many adventures and much exploration of the natural and spiritual world of First Nation peoples, he finally went to university in Canada. There he excelled beyond all academic expectations, later becoming a leading Anthropologist and Social Scientist. Moving to Australia in 1973, where he still lives with his Canadian-born wife, Alessina, he has spent many years working with the Aborigines, helping them to regain secure control over their ancient cultural heritage, their languages and their secret sacred sites.

Alistair Brooks has two other great loves: music and horses. Discovering by chance an innate talent for the Spanish guitar at just twelve years old, he went on, again by chance, to become a professional entertainer, playing classical music and flamenco, as well as accompanying himself while singing from his vast memorized repertoire of traditional songs, collected from many different countries.

Now in his 63rd year and active in his ninth career, Alistair Brooks is a Horse Gentler. He has, and has always had since he was a small boy, the magic touch of the natural healer. He heals stiff and sore animals, horses most especially and their riders too, as well as other humans. His hands are his tools, and it was only at the suggestion of an old work colleague that he has now turned those hands to writing. Fined Four Pounds - Licenced Removed is his first book, and it has already received much acclaim as an absorbing and notable autobiographical achievement.