Kindle Edition Amazon Category:  Literary Fiction Publisher: WH Johnson ISBN-10:  B005FNIYGE Type: Fiction Copyright: 1 August 2011 In the First World War the demands of duty, loyalty and love test a working class woman, an army officer and a deserter. And a ten-year-old boy is drawn into this tangled adult world. A military execution in France...a key event in this story of the conflicting demands of duty, loyalty and love. The war, with its horrifying, endless slaughter on the Western Front, is the backdrop. But it is in a north-east seaport where Dolly Weston, her husband reported missing, falls in love with a wounded army officer, who fears that he will shortly have to return to the Front. Did it show in his face? If they ever told him he was unfit for active service, he would dance for joy. Yet he also felt ashamed. To complicate things further, a deserter emerges, a soldier previously decorated for bravery, and unhealed wounds from a bitter past are reopened. And then there is 10 year-old Joshua, captive to the empty jingoism of his schoolteacher's tales of heroes. It is through small town bigotry and prejudice that the motherless Joshua is led into the world of three people whom he comes to admire and love, but who are destined to be driven cruelly apart. "And Such Great Names as These" is a graphic, sharply-etched novel, raw yet still tender - and above all, deeply convincing. With a skilfully judged plot, characters we identify with and dialogue authentic to the region and period, Allen Makepeace delivers a commanding narrative, both vivid and dramatic.         Excerpt Hector waved, came walking towards her. You'd have taken him for a soldier just by the way he carried himself; the straight back; the crisp sure‑footedness; the eyes steadfastly ahead as though he were led by distant trumpets. His light overcoat, his homburg, could not hide what he was, a real soldier. As he came closer he waved again and Dolly could tell even at that distance how he looked, the cheerful boyish expression, the kindliness of his eyes. The first time, she thought, as he walked towards her ... the first time ... the day he'd come to Mrs Waterstone's ... she had answered the door and let him in. And what a mess she'd been, her hands covered in black lead. She'd never expected a caller and there she was on her knees rubbing away at the oven door, when the bell rang. 'I've come to see my sister,' he had said. 'I'm Mrs Waterstone's brother,' he had added unnecessarily. And Dolly had been conscious of her dirty hands and her bare arms. I'm a skivvy, she thought, but I wish I didn't look like one. 'Oh, right, sir,' she'd said, standing aside, feeling she wanted to wipe her hands on her apron and knowing that would make things worse. She stood aside at the open door, her hands flapping uselessly at her side and wondering if her face was smudged. She had stammered out how Mrs Allen, the full‑time daily, had been called away on family business and that she, Dolly, had been asked in just for the day.

Martyn Bedford, author of The Island of Lost Souls (Bloomsbury 2006) and fiction critic for the Literary Review
Allen Makepeace evokes the time and place so convincingly, without shoving in research detail for the sake of it...

Brighton Argus
...He has a gift for the language and landscape of the north-east and an ability to bring the period alive ...

Northern Echo
... steeped in feeling for the period ... packed with incident ... you just lap it up ...