Launch at Bookcase, Carlisle
Comments on A Penny Spitfire:
“[BHD] has immersed us in the world of post-war Britain in a very precise, enotive way. We sense the very weight and texture of the lives of his characters …. a carefully evolved story building up characters and detail from the inside …. the closely rafted prose as neatly turned as the ..sptitfire badges …evokes time and place with precision. … as sharp as Picture Post, … no hint of nostalgia, only an honest understanding of the difficult lives that people have to face.” – SM, reviewing in Cumberland News
“The story is gripping. Derek Fitton has more than a touch of Everyman. This is a beautifully written modern allegory.” – MW
A PENNY SPITFIRE
BY
Brindley Hallam Dennis
Available direct from
or
or from Bookends in Carlisle and Keswick
BHD’s novel A Penny Spitfire published March 2011 by Pewter Rose Press. There is a brief author’s biography showing on their website. The story is set in October 1947, in a town inspired by BHD’s childhood memories of Burton Upon Trent.
To a background of industrial steam engines, hauling their trains between the dark brick walls of brewery buildings, the characters struggle to come to terms with the changes that war and history have forced upon them and their town. Fatherless children and childless men face desire, aspiration, shame and disappointment as their war-shattered world rises from the rubble of its bombsites.
Derek Fitton is a mechanic, but people do not fit together as easily as engines, and Charles Bury, younger son of a local business man, dreams of a new, fairer, Socialist world. Clive Dandridge, one step ahead of the law, entangles a troop of misfit children, including the introspective Paul and the runaway Jack, in his perverted schemes, from a hidden den deep within the rubble of the bombsite where Henry Street used to stand. On Edward Street, Tom and Violet Ferryman run The Odd Dog pub, where Burma Sammy drinks away his demob money, across the road from Fitton’s garage, and Maria clacks, clacks in her high heels, over the level crossing and down towards the Post Office at the corner.
Fitton has served in India during World War Two, a life changing experience. The novella opens with a prologue that begins… There are photographs of that time…..
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