Böcker av Roy Jenner

World War 2, London 1940. For 76 consecutive nights Adolph Hitler unleashed the fury of his Luftwaffe on Britain's largest city in a nonstop hail of bombs that had helpless civilians wilting under their blast. Step Green was three weeks old and his sister Tess two years when the Green family of eleven siblings sought refuge from the bombing and in desperation were evacuated from London's East End and dispatched to sympathetic countries of the British Empire to evade the Fuehrer's wrath. Having been assessed as being too young to travel from their homeland, Step and Tess were sent to East Anglia to live with an aunt where they were reasonably safe from the war, but never safe from death which lurked in the hedgerows of Poplar Farm. Stepney Green dedicated his life to seeking the one responsible for the demise of his sister so that he could forgive him, creating a devastating outcome.

Joseph Scott became enrolled in the school of life in February1990, the younger brother of two. The school of life; the one big pool of knowledge where one starts to learn from the first breath taken. There Joe learned how to live, how to laugh, how to accept, how to forgive, how to understand and eventually how to grieve, but how to love? No. He had no need to learn to love for he was born with love in his heart as we all were and his pathway into adult years was enhanced by that love and the directions in which he chose to direct it. His love for his parents knew no bounds and his learning experiences grew more challenging as he moved into adulthood and was forced to contend with the demanding reality of their senior years. This story takes us inside Joe's head as he learns to accept the mother he adores, though mature and beautiful on the outside, is changing and moving away from him in her mind. You are invited to share the pictures in Joe's head as he takes control of the family unit and struggles to understand family secrets inadvertently exposed as senior years affect those loved by him.

His dream was Eden Park - Number 10 jersey. His nightmare Mt Eden Prison - cell block 10 with a promising All Black rugby career shattered. A sentence of a life behind bars can do much to change a man's thinking. 'A grave miscarriage of justice,' were the words on the paper the Minister of Justice had handed to Terry Stamp when it was decided after fourteen years of incarceration he had not killed his wife. 'Go home, my man. Start your life again. You have plenty of good years remaining.' Yes, plenty of good years to control the bitterness filling his heart and driving him on in his personal quest for his wife's killer. He and Cavanagh had been married ten years when she was taken from him in a brutal attack by a spurned group of rugby supporters at a time when Terry Stamp was a name on everyone's lips whenever All Black football was mentioned.

In retirement in Winter's Song retirement village Adam Mulberry found each of his aged companions had an untold story to tell, an anthology of their life experiences, which he slowly extracted from them as respect and confidence grew. It had been hard at first, but gradually for many of them Adam had compiled a file in his laptop. Each was a walking history book which in some cases went back almost a full century and it excited him to know he had been accepted by them. With their permission he had converted that knowledge and documented in biographical detail, a series of short stories, cameos that depicted the change that had occurred in a dozen lifetimes on the converging trails that led people not known to each other to a common destination; Winter's Song. These are their stories.

From London to New Zealand Laurie Davidson spent twenty five years travelling the world with his guitar pumping out his music as a busker on the cobbles and in the markets, wearing the personal injustice heaped upon him like a badge of honour. There was no other way. He was a proud man and took the social rejections on the chin, picked himself up and was straight back into it. When down and out there was but one way for him to go and that was up and he wouldn't be stopped. Four years of prison was a hard school for a young man who lost most of what he loved when punished for a crime he did not commit, but he came to realise the friends who remained at his side were true friends who loved him in spite of what he did, or didn't do.