When it was published in 1991 I read my cousin Simon The Fate of Glassingall in one sitting, laughing all the way through. Inspired by his holiday visits to our grandfather’s house in Scotland it was a free-flowing compendium of school days in the 1950s and 1960s, ghosts, rock music, flying saucers, real and model railways, the eccentricity of adults, and the pain of loss when the house was demolished.
Simon has now modernised, up-dated and sharpened it for a new generation, as Losing It All.
London boy Anthony spends the summer holidays of the 1960s at Glenturret, his grandfather’s fascinating haunted Scottish country house. When it becomes a boarding school, Anthony goes into its Sixth Form, and eventually teaches there until a horrifying mystery closes it. With his inheritance after Grandpa’s death, he buys the house, but the dark force has not gone.
“This sort of book is one of the better ways of recording recent history.” (BBC World Service)
“I was maimed by excessive laughing. Tears blotted out the text.” (A Brook)
“Hilarious and touching.” (The Month)
Online from Amazon (£4.99 paperback, £2.99 Kindle) and from Witley Press bookshop.
About Simon
Simon is a semi-retired Wimbledon College English and drama teacher, and has now published several books.
I published his reminisence of working for 40 years at the College Carry on College with particular emphasis on the school’s drama productions (out of print).
He and his wife Mary produced seven CD/MP3/audiobooks for SmartPass (1999-2010): “Macbeth”, “Hamlet”, “Julius Caesar”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Twelfth night”, “Pre-20th century poetry” and “Shakespeare: the works” All are available as downloads and CDs from www.smartpass.)
Simon was awarded an MBE for work in education and school drama in 2016.
