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Watch the Wall My Darling by Richard Swale

UK price: £6.64     US price: $10.15 Publisher: Diadem Books: an imprint of SPIDERWIZE Format: Paperback Size : 20.2 x 12.6 x 1.6 cm Pages: 184 ISBN: 978-1907294020 Published: Sept-2009

 

 

 

Watch the Wall My Darling
An old-time smuggling adventure!
This story is based loosely on the lives of the author's great, great, great, grandfathers, John Andrew and James Law. Both were well known smugglers in the late 18th and early 19th Century, and operated at the same time on the north Yorkshire coast between Scarborough and the Tees estuary.

Book description

The story is based loosely on the lives of the author’s great, great, great, grandfathers, John Andrew and James Law. Both were well known smugglers in the late 18th and early 19th. Century, and operated at the same time on the north Yorkshire coast between Scarborough and the Tees estuary, although there is no evidence that they ever met.

The story is gripping, colourful, and vividly evocative of a bygone time when men and their loyal women survived as ‘Freetraders’ to make a profit in those hard times! The men were highly respected in their areas. They were rough, tough, characters, living in rough, tough, times. The tale that follows may not be a strictly true account, but will have the reader eagerly turning the pages to follow the adventures of these bygone folk as they went about the business of Freetrading, or, as it is more generally known—smuggling.


About the author
The author writes: “I was born in a village close to the City of York in 1922, educated at Archbishop Holgate's Grammar School and spent my spare time in my youth rowing, sailing and swimming in the river Ouse. It was my intention to go to Loughborough College with the intention of becoming a teacher but Hitler put a stop to that and I joined the RAF instead becoming, in due course, a night fighter pilot involved in the Italian campaign. An account of my war is lodged in the Imperial War Museum. Returning to York after the war I became a Fire Surveyor with the Yorkshire Insurance Company (now defunct) a job which took me around estates of the landed gentry in the area referred to in the book. I found John Andrew was still remembered kindly and one gentleman bought me a pint on the strength of my relationship! Over the years my wife Mavis and our two children, have drifted south west and we are now, still all together with our extended family in Cornwall which is not unlike Yorkshire in many ways—particularly in its smuggling history. We have sailed the coast of Cornwall and I have spent my latter years writing in most of its forms, mainly short stories, articles for newspapers and national magazines, poems, plays, and, of course, books. One cannot help ones ancestors and I hope mine will be regarded in the light of the times and not equated with the present day smuggler of life destroying drugs!”