A Book of Poems

I wrote these poems at various times during my life, beginning when I bought my first typewriter from a friend before I went off to college. Many were written in Cambridge, England, in the 1960's. After a visit to my maternal ancestors' home town of Whitby, Yorkshire, I wrote The Romance of Beggar's Bridge, the central work in this collection. We visited again in 1997, with my young son, when I had discovered that one pair of my 3rd great-grandparents had been married nearby in Egton Church - the cover photos are from that visit, when the river Esk was in full flood, giving me a real insight into Tom Ferres' plight the night before he sailed to fight the Spanish Armada and vowed to build the bridge, now almost 400 years old. Other poems date from the late 80's and early 90's, and the book closes with a short story written in 1967, during the filming of the Battle of Britain movie.