Prince Hal and his Friend Jack Falstaff

Prince Hal and his Friend Jack Falstaff is a Shakespearean tale that has been retold by Alan Oberman.

Rather than being merely new words, the story is also set to new music by Alan Oberman and also is accompanied by evocative and colourful illustrations created by Robin Carter.

There are two CDs that accompany the book, the first CD includes the story with and without the music, whilst the second CD has incidental music and the story told through music, alone.

The narration is by Philip Bowen, and the musicians are Laura Greenwood (piano) John Hymas (violin) Alan Oberman (saxophone) Graeme Lamble (electric bass and guitar) Tony Egan (drums) Lu Mason (vocals) and Simon Fraser (flugelhorn).

The engineering and editing work were all undertaken by Robin Lamble and the work was recorded at The Institute, Llangamach Wells, and Penlanole, Rhyader, both in Wales.

The story is re-told in a more modern language, yet it is still able to capture what makes this story one of the best-loved of all the stories told by master storyteller, William Shakespeare.

It is published by Cambria Books at an exceptionally reasonable price of £9.99 and this book belongs on the shelves of every family in the Kingdom and also in every school in the land, too!

It is published by Cambria Books (www.cambriabooks.co.uk) and is available through That's Books.

The Compass Dances

The Compass Dances is a collection of the writings of poet Michael Pickering.

It covers the years 1955 to 2015.

Michael Pickering began writing poems when he was seven years of age, although this anthology of his poems starts from when he was roughly 20 and carries on until he was 80.

The subject range is breathtaking covering people, places, ideas, modes of thinking, dreams, realities, legends both modern and ancient.

There are also poems in the style of others (look out for the rather charming tribute to Hilaire Belloc) on page 266, for example.

Mr  Pickering has kindly and thoughtfully provided some footnotes and pronunciation guide notes for several of his poems.

He has used a wide variety of poetic styles throughout this anthology including some styles not much used in modern times and also some poems that are of a more experimental nature.

This is a fascinating and interesting work.

The book is published by Matador at £10.99 and is available from That's Books.

Fast Forward Music and Politics in 1974

Fast Forward Music and Politics in 1974 is the fourth book by Steve Millward.

He observes, sagely, that "It was a period of tumultuous change, the repercussions of which are still being felt today."

Steve's books have covered the time period between 1964 and, with this fourth book, 1974.

It was an amazing ten year period, and 1974 -when Steve started his first job- was an amazing year both musically and politically.

There was the oil crisis, an international recession, the Watergate scandal that felled a president, Richard Nixon, the strange case of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese  Liberation Army, the terrible situation in Northern Ireland, football violence, the increasing fervour of the National Front and more troubles besides.

However. All was not doom and gloom, because as well as being a time of political turmoil, 1974 was an absolutely stunning year for new music.

Billy Swan with "I Can Help",  Carole King was scoring remarkably well -her 1971 album Tapestry was joined three years later by her album Wrap Around Joy, from which were released two hits, "Jazzman" and "Nightingale."

Elvis Presley was enjoying his popularity and Paul McCartney's band Wings release of Band on the Run toward the rear end of 1973 was receiving both critical and popular acclaim. (REVIEWER'S WHINGE: I do wonder what happened to my copy of that!)

Another former Beatle, Ringo Starr, was also doing very well for himself. His version of "You're Sixteen" released the year before was a fairly major hit for him and the album he released in 1974, Goodnight Vienna did well on both sides of the Atlantic.

The book also touches on the rise of Bruce Springsteen, the advent of Punk music (the American and the British varieties) and other such luminaries as the Wolf Tones -with their Irish Nationalist songs, and a host of artistes of various stripes such as Flora Purim, Santana and who can forget the Average White Band's ultra funky song "Pick Up the Pieces"? You'd never guess that, far from being an American band they actually haled from Dundee in Eastern Scotland.

This book belongs on the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in the history of popular music.

It's published by Matador at £8.99. You can buy it through That's Books.

Chorus Endings

Chorus Endings is a novel by David Warwick.

Peter and his friends grew up in rural Hampshire directly in the years that were just after the Second World War.

Their lifestyle was a pretty idyllic one, they had carte blanche, in effect, to roam around the villages and countryside of their part of Hampshire with nary a care in the world.

It seems that in those blissful days there was always something to see and something to do and always an adventure or two just beckoning them on.

Jimmy the Saint, a local artist in their particular favourite and something of a hero to them all.

As well as being an artist Jimmy is also a fount of all knowledge of the folklore of the village and of the amazing characters who occupied it down through the years.

There was Chirper Edwards, a not especially good town-crier, Freddy the Fop and No-Good Naughton, Stoytan the Jutish warrior, Morgana the pagan goddess and also the less than favourable ancestors of the current Squire.

But was everything right? What if things were not as it seemed?

By chance, four decades later, Peter stumbles on information that changes all that he new about Jimmy the Saint, and Peter and his wife Helen find themselves attempting to find the truth of the circumstances that surrounded the sudden and apparently mysterious disappearance of Jimmy all those years ago.

They find evidence of murder and of madness of insanity, espionage and betrayal and it seems that his hero was centre-stage throughout all of these incidents.

And what role had the mysterious wealthy American played in this tangled web?

It's an interesting novel as it reflects very well the zeitgeist of the years post war up to the present day with new religions and cults springing up almost daily, or so it seemed.

To book is published by Matador at £8.99 and it's available via That's Books.

Get Lucky

A blue-eyed boy, a rebellious teen, a womaniser, a brawler, a boozer, an International art thief, gaol habitue of prisons in several countries, jail breaker, a successful entrepreneur.

These are not the cast members of the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie, they are the various attributes of one very extraordinary man, Paul Eagles.

Paul Eagles' autobiography opens with Paul at 22 stone in a hospital bed, chained to two prison warders.

His mind begins to wander over some events from  his past life. Art theft, a young lady called Joker at his side as he checked over the security system of the Singer Museum in Laren, temporary repository for a Ruben's. And likely to be more temporary than originally envisaged if Paul Eagles has his way.

He has made, both by legitimate and less than legitimate means, several fortunes and lost them in a variety of ways including being cheated by people who  he should have been able to trust, including his lawyer and a so-called business adviser.

But no matter what happened, who he had upset he always seemed to end up smelling of roses.

It is a book with a wide cast of heroes and villains of various stripes and types and of moments of deep sadness interwoven with his sardonic wit and humour.

It's a quirky tale and ideal for your last minute summer holiday reading if you haven't been on holiday yet.

It's published by Matador and costs £9.99, you can buy it from That's Books.

A New Day Dawning

A New Day Dawning is a new book by Edward Forde Hickey.

The book follows a group of children in the part of Ireland that is Tipperary and a hillside community therein.

The novel follows a group of children through their early lives as they learn the ways of life in Rural Ireland during the 1940s as their grip on who they are and their unique, individual personalities grow and develop.

Hickey knows the area depicted well, as he was born in Dolla, Tipperary. Where he still has a small hillside farm, together with a home in Kent shared with his wife and three children.

The setting of the book is, says Hickey: "the unreal world of Rookery Rally."

The format of the book is interesting as it eschews ordinary chapters for a series of vignettes of varying lengths, each of which relate to different events in a particular month of a particular year as the book continues from September 1945 and the cessation of the distant war right through to late September 1946.

We follow the children as they learn right from wrong, sometimes with horrible consequences, they learn to say their Rosaries ("inspired by the bespectacled Pope" in a message sent all the way from Rome.

They learn that killing is wrong and that some adults are not as nice as some other adults, and that's putting it very mildly as some of the adults in the area are, to put it mildly, not very nice at all.

Slipperslapper, for example is one of the most horrific characters that I have ever come across.

The book is published by Matador at £10.99 and is available from the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop, just to the right of this review.

Early Days

Playwright Caroline Mitchel Rehder has written two plays that are emotionally charged as they offer the theatregoer an insight into how suffering can begin in the life of a child.

The plays show two entirely different ways, that are all too common, in which a child can find themselves trapped and, as a result, can suffer horribly and, apparently it would seem, totally unnoticed by the adults that surround them.

In the play is "Contractual Obligations"  we see a mother who is incapable of forming that all important mother-child bonding. We watch the unfortunate consequences of this failure as they negatively impact upon the relationship between the two of them.

The second play is called "The Divorce."

It tells the horrible story of a child who disintegrates before the audience as the parents battle each other for supremacy in their divorce, yet fail to notice the horrible impact this event is having on their own child.

The plays are highly stylised and, should they be produced, would probably be best suited to all cast members being played by adult actors, rather than children.

The playscript is published by Matador and costs £9.99 and is available from the That's Books and Entertainment bookshop, which is to the right of this review.