Off The Wall: the journey of a play

Illustrated with photographs

Off the Wall is a lively guide to the idiosyncrasies of Hadrian's Wall and the communities that live at either end and along the route.

Cloud Nine Troubadours walked the length of the Wall performing every night. The play - included in full - was a specially commissioned account of one entrepreneur's attempt to turn the Wall into the world's longest theme park.

This book records the journey in its raw detail, parts of which were also covered as a daily log by the Newcastle Journal.

Peter Mortimer is a poet, playwright and editor who lives on the Northumberland coast. He is the editor of Iron Press and the artistic director of Cloud Nine Theatre Productions. He is the author of the best-selling Broke Through Britain, 100 Days on Holy Island and Cool for Qat: a Yemeni Journey, all published by Mainstream.

His other books include: I Married the Angel of the North, avaiable in the Poetry section, and Last of the Hunters in the Social History section

Long unavailable but in demand, this pioneering study of twentieth-century working class reading and writing in Britain helped revive a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional literary cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain.

Dockers and Detectives comprises five long linked chapters on:

● literature and politics
● American influences on popular fiction
● popular literature during WWII
● the novels of working class writers from Liverpool
● the novels of the Jewish East End

Dockers and Detectives was Ken Worpole’s first book, and was widely reviewed and praised on publication.

Ken Worpole is the author of a number of books on architecture, landscape and social history, including Last Landscapes and Here Comes the Sun. He writers regularly for the Guardian, Prospect, Times Higher Education Supplement and other papers.

"For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape." - The Independent

Women and children make up 80% of the world's refugee population, yet their voices are seldom heard. In Crossing The Border women writers from Somalia, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey, Northern Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Congo tell their stories. All the women are refugees or are living in exile.


In addition to the stories and memories, Crossing The Border includes articles on women's lives and on women's writing in each of these countries. Jennifer Langer, herself the daughter of refugees, works in refugee education in London, and is the founder of Exiled Writers Ink (020 8458 1910).

"What is particularly valuable in this book is the attention Lucas gives to a number of texts from the 1920s that have had less attention than they deserve in literary-critical accounts of the decade... the dust-jacket photograph of Nan Youngman in 1926 with cigarette and guitar, so wonderfully evocative of the spirit Lucas respects and consistently carries forward in his writing"' - MLR

Refugees and asylum seekers are rarely out of the headlines, or political debate, but only rarely do people in exile have the opportunity to speak for themselves.

The Silver Throat of the Moon includes material from writers originating in countries as diverse as Algeria and Zimbabwe, Somalia and Iran, Kurdistan and Afghanistan. Some authors, like Choman Hardi, Sousa Jamba, Reza Baraheni and the late Miroslav Jancic are now well known internationally for their writing in English, others, like Maxemed Ibrahim ‘Hadraawi’, are revered internationally but fairly new to readers of English.

The causes of exile are manifold, and finding refuge no easy matter. Predrag Finci comments on how many countries he has passed through, whereas his mother has rarely left her village yet the country she has lived in has changed almost as often. Sousa Jamba, on the other hand, pretends to be from a different country to his own as so few Westerners have heard of his former home, and are made nervous by hearing of an unknown land.

As well as writers in exile describing their personal experience, this collection includes essays about being writers and readers in exile. These articles range from the difficulties in holding on to traditional rural imagery in a place so far from home through to the, perhaps temporary, identity of a whole generation of young writers of Algerian origin whose lives have been entirely spent in France.

"This is an excellent and comprehensive anthology, full of passionate and thoughtful writing by the people most likely to know the truth about life in exile; refugees themselves." - New Internationalist

"...ambitious anthology of prose and poetry... a big volume with a diverse range of styles, genres and content... The Silver Throat of the Moon is an elequent book. It is also deeply - and disturbingly - honest." - Writing in Education

The Silver Throat of the Moon is the third anthology of writing by writers in exile edited by Jennifer Langer published by Five Leaves. The Bend in the Road (which included some of the stories in this volume) was the first book by refugees writing in Britain. Crossing the Border: voices of refugee and exiled women is still available.

Jennifer Langer, herself the daughter of refugees, lives in London where she has formed Exiled Writers Ink!

Stanley Middleton is one of Britain's most distinguished novelists. This collection includes three previously unpublished short stories and a lecture on old age by the Booker Prize-winning author. There are essays by A.S Byatt, Ronald Blythe and others, together with an in-depth interview in celebration of Stanley Middleton's long and brilliant career.

Also available from Five Leaves is HOLIDAY, the author's Booker Prize Winner.

"How splendid that the thoughts of this funny/serious and essentially good man should be gathered up... If you are going to clone people, clone Richard Boston in overwhelming quantities - the world would be a better place" - George Melly

"...the off-beat erudition and the witty eccentricity make this a very enjoyable book" - Freedom

"The author stood for the European Parliament on the slogan 'It's a big trough and I want to get my nose in it.' 1018 people voted for him - but it was not enough. And so Europe lost the man who would have dined at our expense on the finest French cuisine and voted for anything that made the world a safer place for eccentrics, lovers of Biggles, nudists... and the postman who built a cathedral in his garden from scraps he found on his postal round" - The Guardian

"...deserves a prize for the best cover photograph - the author seated in a deckchair totally naked except for this laptop"
- The Spectator

"...a marvellous read - witty and independent and full of shrewd insights from, I suppose, the foremost gay poet working in Britain today. If you want to map out a gay canon, start here: a colleague asked me what's been done on gay poetics and I can't think of anything better." - Gay Times