Bøker av JONATHAN

"For years I have augmented my income by working as a `hack` writer, penning throwaway articles for anyone who will pay me. Regularly, I would get the bus into Exeter City Centre, and sneak into W.H.Smiths and peruse the magazines for sale, and make a surreptitious list of any new publications whom I could approach to buy an article from me. One day in the late winter, I was doing just this when I found a copy of a magazine called Koi Carp. With my tongue firmly in cheek, I telephoned them, and asked whether they would be interested in an article - or even a series of articles - about the fortean aspects of their hobby. Much to my surprise and gratification they accepted, and so I started work on my first article. I had been so used to working for fly-by-night publications, that I had stopped taking a long-term view of my writing work. I was lucky if a series I wrote lasted three issues, so the fact that I knew next to nothing about the fortean aspect of koi carp-keeping didn't really matter. However, on this occasion, I was hoist by my own petard, as the series carried on for nearly two years! After six or seven issues, I bit the bullet, and started to employ the old journalistic adage that one should never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Some of the stories that follow are true. Some are mostly true, others have a germ of truth, and even the ones that I made up are based on true events. I think my proudest moment as a journalist came after the publication of "They Saved Hitler's Koi", when Simon Wolstencroft, an old friend of mine, and then editor of a sister-magazine to the one for which I was working, sent me the following email. 1. How did you think you would get away with having this printed? 2. How did you get away with it? For goodness sake, don't read these stories looking for any firm insights into the history and culture of koi keeping, but I hope that they may give you some little amusement, because that was the spirit in which they were written."

Below the Precipice is an outstanding novel that is about a young boy who is harassed and recruited by an army unit from the Civil war era. He stumbles upon them in a modern-day parkland, because of an unfortunate incident which partially debilitates him during his pre-adolescent years. In the encroaching years, he investigates their demise and attempts to rid them by any means possible. He endures them throughout the turmoil, eventually realizing his family is what he holds dearest. Will he be saved from his visual haunts that terrorize him at every turn? Will he ever be free from the condemning, lost troupe that needs justice to rectify one dubious act of slaughter? And who else will be affected by the group's subtle pulling of drawstrings through a fiercely-brave youth? As you read, please, please see that not all that can kill you Breathes. Teal is flying.

Jonathan Swift was born in 1667, on the 30th of November. His father was a Jonathan Swift, sixth of the ten sons of the Rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, near Ross, in Herefordshire, who had married Elizabeth Dryden, niece to the poet Dryden's grandfather. Jonathan Swift married, at Leicester, Abigail Erick, or Herrick, who was of the family that had given to England Robert Herrick, the poet. As their eldest brother, Godwin, was prospering in Ireland, four other Swifts, Dryden, William, Jonathan, and Adam, all in turn found their way to Dublin. Jonathan was admitted an attorney of the King's Inns, Dublin, and was appointed by the Benchers to the office of Steward of the King's Inns, in January, 1666. He died in April, 1667, leaving his widow with an infant daughter, Jane, and an unborn child. Swift was born in Dublin seven months after his father's death. His mother after a time returned to her own family, in Leicester, and the child was added to the household of his uncle, Godwin Swift, who, by his four wives, became father to ten sons of his own and four daughters. Godwin Swift sent his nephew to Kilkenny School, where he had William Congreve among his schoolfellows. In April, 1782, Swift was entered at Trinity College as pensioner, together with his cousin Thomas, son of his uncle Thomas. That cousin Thomas afterwards became rector of Puttenham, in Surrey. Jonathan Swift graduated as B.A. at Dublin, in February, 1686, and remained in Trinity College for another three years. He was ready to proceed to M.A. when his uncle Godwin became insane. The troubles of 1689 also caused the closing of the University, and Jonathan Swift went to Leicester, where mother and son took counsel together as to future possibilities of life. His most famous work remains Gulliver's Travels.