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|  | | Boy Among Men
A comical story of life in a London comprehensive school in the 1960s
When rookie teacher Lawrence Fairbrother arrives at Docklands Comprehensive School he finds himself in the centre of conflict. The Annexe to which he is assigned is staffed largely by malcontents and cynics struggling to occupy the less able pupils. In contrast The Paddock, late the Girls' Grammar School, houses a nucleus of reactionary academics. He is thus between the devil and the dep blue sea. When he is offered a post at The Paddock, in preference to the attractive but wayward Valerie Arrowsmith, for whom he has conceived a passion, Lawrence has to scrutinise hi | |  | | Charles Dickens and the Night Visitors
Charles Dickens and the Night Visitors is based on Dickens’s Italian tour (1844-5). However, the author is kept mainly off-stage, the action being seen through the eyes of various family members, eight bystanders offering differing perspectives on Dickens’s traumatic relationship with Madame de la Rue.
In December 1844 Charles Dickens, on holiday in Italy with his family, undertakes to give treatment to Augusta de la Rue, the wife of his friend Emile. Already an amateur practitioner in the new science of hypnosis, Dickens essays to evict the spectres that nightly haunt Madame de la Rue’s bedchamber. The consequences of these ministrations are dire, for in banishing Augusta’s phantoms Dickens arouses his wife’s fury and unleashes demons of his own.
| |  | | Eight American Stories
Eight American Stories selected and edited for schools in the Longman Imprint edition.
Short Stories by Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Stephen Minot, Flannery O'Connor, William saroyan, John Steinbeck, John Updike and Richard Wright. Includes photographs illustrating The American Scene, lead-in comment, Questions and Points for Discussion and Select Bibliography, and a map of the United States. Intended for British readers in the upper school.
| |  | | Paris Bound
At once a road novel, an offbeat love story and a mystery, Paris Bound will appeal to both male and female readers, especially those who have experienced the pains and pleasures of culture-clashed romance.
i>Paris Bound /i>is the story of two lovers, Roy Musgrave, a British professor and Nadia Benbouzid, his North African student, who travel by car from Morocco to Paris, staying at campsites in Spain and finally a hotel in Paris. Their escapades along the way include almost running out of petrol in the Rif and smuggling out of Morocco not only contraband currency but a Moslem girl. Only Nadia's charms and initiative save them from disaster.
In the intimacy of tent sharing their relationship deepens, each seeing in the other the answer to their future happin | |  | | Punching Judy
This story of the relationship between an ageing boxing coach and a female juvenile delinquent takes place in southeast London in the 1950s, when butch girls needed to punch their weight or go under.
Judy Smith, on release from a detention centre, is advised by her probation officer to contact Apeman Harry O'Riordan her former boxing coach. Ape, needing the money and recognising Judy's ring potential, agrees to give her one last chance.
That Judy is an odd lot Ape accepts, but when he finds that she has stolen not only goods but also the woman he loves, he walks away in disgust. A crack on the skull, however, received in his night job as a bouncer, leaves Ape floundering: no work, no woman and no money. Can he rescue himself from depression and the booze? Or Judy, his | |  | | The Confessions of Becky Sharp
Lady Rebecca Crawley (aka Becky Sharp), in reduced circumstances and crippled with gout, seeks a publisher for her memoirs. At a gathering of literary and social worthies she encounters a saturnine Thackeray, an enthusiastic Dickens and a sympathetic Elizabeth Gaskell. However, it is young Grub Street journalist Fred Baverstock who pursues her, hungry for details of her love affairs with the notorious Lord Steyne.
When Fred disappears, Becky responds to Elizabeth’s plea that she tell the tale of her birth in Versailles, her experiences of the French Revolution and her convent upbringing. Mrs Gaskell is less than sanguine though with the more explicit details of Becky’s affairs and infidelities. Finally Fred returns, only to be shocked by the most scandalous revelation of all.
However, Elizabeth’s clerical husband, persuades Sir Rawdon (Rawdy) Crawley, Bart, that his mother, Lady Crawley, has been much abused, by Thackeray and others. So, when the ailing Rawdy suggests
that she look after his Park Lane establishment, this naturally accords with Becky’s inclinations and, her gout in abeyance under a new medical regime, she embarks on a fresh round of roguish activities.
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