Mansfield author's new novel is a saga of the coalfields

His recently released second book Lambs deals with an historical subject very close to home - his own family.

David said: “ Lambs is basically the tale of one hundred years in the life of an East Midlands’ mining family.

“My father was born on 1906. It’s now 2018.

“In the 111 years since his birth to today, I knew him for just 15 brief, shared years before he died.

“In effect, I didn’t really know him at all. I knew just the stories and many of those made no sense so, like so many others in that situation, I filled in the gaps. I put them in a book.

“My sister ran away from home when I was 13. I was never to discover why. It was never discussed in front of me. It becomes crucial to the story.

“I was told as a child that my paternal grandfather died young and my father brought the family up.

“I only discovered since writing the novel that, in fact, my grandfather lived into his eighties and had abandoned his family, eventually outliving his own son, my dad.

“This only served to reinforce my conviction that what we think we know is often what others would gave us know.

“The story takes the Lambs, through my father’s life and through my life, both fictionalised through dramatic licence. Much is true.

The story runs from WW1 through the General Strike, the Depression, the Jarrow March and the poverty on to WW2. Interspersed with the personal stories of the characters are actual historical events.

It tells the story of the Lambs through their growing pains, the involvement of some characters in Aberfan and the Battle of Orgreave, the personal grief, the ill health and family deaths but also the humour, right up to modern times and the Twin Towers.

Lambs is available on Amazon