11-Mar-2006

The "Huckster" Download the cover HERE (Requires Adobe Reader download HERE)

    A memoir entitled "HUCKSTER - FIFTY YEARS ON THE ROADS OF EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE". The book is a compound of business, travel, history and politics of the period 1950 - 2000 and describes some dramatic and occasionally hilarious encounters, such as:

October 1956: He was on the Western edge of Budapest Capital of Hungary when he heard on the car radio that the Russians had invaded the town  from the East

October 1962: One of his occasional drinking associates in Hungary was Greville Wynne who sold industrial equipment in various of the Communist countries. He also worked for British Intelligence, and on November 2nd the Russians collared him, and next day he was in the Lubianka prison in Moscow; a guest of the KGB. Three days before, we were drinking and talking in the Budapest Gellert Hotel. Eleven Months later, after a very hard time in a Russian Prison, he was exchanged for Gordon Lonsdale the Russian spy serving a very long sentence in an English Prison. Which is why the Russians grabbed him.

May 1964: The first week of May found him in the USA. In the ten days he was there he became an observer of corruption, both business and political. But most startling was to be persuaded at ten minutes notice to give an unprepared lecture to 100 murderers serving life imprisonment in Maryland state Penitentiary. Next month the prisoners rioted, leaving two warders and three convicts dead.

August 1968: On the 21st, en route to Eastern Czechoslovakia he broke the journey in Prague. That night the Russians landed in the airport as their allies, East Germans, Poles Etc invaded by land. During the next ten days he motored over much of Czechoslovakia talking to Polish and Hungarian soldiers. Back in Prague, he found many British and other journalists confined in a hotel with little knowledge of events outside. He was able to tell them, to their astonishment and relief.

My second Book: "Paul of Tarsus" Which has a secondary title "AN ENIGMA ENSHROUDED IN A MYSTERY"

Download the cover HERE

is an attempt to compose a biography of Saint Paul based on the meagre information available in the New Testaments acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul. Dying, or executed in Rome in about AD 60, he spent the last 30 years of his life evangelising among the Jews and Gentiles of the Middle East and Greece.

The book describes the posthumous affects of his teaching during the next six centuries. During which competing Christian orthodoxies and heresies tore much of Europe and the near East asunder in cruel wars of religious and Jewish persecution. Many questions with which academics and theologians have not seemed to be overly concerned have been examined. Here are a few.

Did Paul, Christ's last apostle meet Peter, Christ's first apostle 3 times in 30 years? How was it Paul never met Jesus in Jerusalem, nor observed the crucifixion? How could Paul not have met Peter in Rome? Has Paul been wrongly accused of being an advocate of anti-semitism? Did Paul despise Peter for retaining his Jewish practices and Peter hate Paul for usurping his authority?. Paul took Christianity away from the Nazarene followers of Christ and parochial limitations of Palestine into the outside world centred on Rome.

My Third Book: THIS IS A FAST MOVING BOOK ABOUT RELIGION, TRAVEL, HISTORY AND POLITICS. "FROM THE SHANKHILL TO THE SHENANDOAH - THE SCOTCH IRISH IN AMERICA". It is about the 250,000 Ulsterman and their families who left Northern Ireland between 1710 and 1785.

"Never mess about with an Ulsterman - ask the English". These people were not the half starved Catholic Irish from the South, who departed for America from 1850 after the terrible Potato famine, but strong, belligerent, bloody minded, hard working Protestants; sick and tired of the English Government's interfering with their way of life in matters of business and religion. For 100 years they were the back bone of Ulster and fought hard for King William II's Protestant army in the defeat of the deposed King James II and his Catholic/French army at the battle of the Boyne, 1690.

Feeling unrewarded, they voted with their feet, taking there skills to the American Colonies where land was cheap and plentiful and a tolerant welcome awaited them from the English and others, there since 1620.

They ploughed the land, built villages and towns and became the First Indian Fighters. They opened the frontiers for other settlers eager to penetrate to the west.

The Ulster Scotch were Celts who had originally left Ireland for Scotland 1000 years earlier; then coming back from 1610 at the behest of King James I to form the plantation of Ulster; a bulwark against the Catholic native Irish and French Invasions. In America life was also hard, and the climate pitiless, but the individual knew that from hard work and no interference from a hostile government he could prosper - mightily; and the Scotch Irish did!. Of the 44 presidents, 17 can claim Ulster ancestry, and Scotch Irish names run strongly through the ranks of captains of industry and statesmen of great renown. In the American war of independence 1775 - 81, George Washington considered them to be his finest and most reliable soldiers, and they played a major part in forcing the English to start their departure after the surrender in 1781.

I recommend this book to all peoples of Celtic and Anglo Saxon origin. It is high on History, war, 18th century politics and humour, and low on boredom.

THE SCOTCH IRISH BREWED IN SCOTLAND - BOTTLED IN IRELAND UNCORKED IN AMERICA