Beyond the Oak

About the Book

The book tells a story about a young girl who gets caught up in a fantasy adventure, not of her choosing. During her journey she meets a number of different characters including a talking horse, which teaches her the futility of life's so called important lessons of the adult world. But as she enters this silly place, she does learn also about the important parts of life such as grief and distress, happiness and pleasure, joy and pain and above all the loneliness of going it alone.

The book is divided up into chapters which give a reading length of about 10 minutes, for night time reading and each chapter is an adventure of its own and ends at a point where the child looks forward to the next reading.

Much of the book is satirically political and was written at a time when the author was in total despair of its politicians. This despair has of course deepened over the years. Once the adult has solved the clue, which is not a difficult one and is in the title of the Land where the adventure takes place, much of the satire falls into place.

About the Author

The author started writing many years ago, but originally concentrated on poetry, some of which has been published abroad, but it was not until he had a letter published in Nigeria, the repercussions of which went on for months that he realised that the pen was mightier than weapons of mass destruction and started to right his first children's novel, though this is the first to be published.

Born in London in 1941 he went to Sea as a Purser on one of the East African run ships, where he met a lot of people from the then Colonies and realised that politicians could really get in wrong.

Coming ashore and dabbling in politics as a District councillor for a while, he found that politics was about politics and that the people did not count for anything at all. Being thoroughly disillusioned he decided to write this children's novel.

Now semi-retired he lives in Peterborough, with his Russian born wife and step son, His own children having long since flown the nest. It was because of the persistence of one of his daughters that this book has now come to the publishers.