Category: Uncategorized
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The Twist #10: The Trial Part One
Before I get onto just why my novel What Goes Around found its way into this trial, I think it best to tell of the developments, both positive and worrying, for Don in the lead-up to his first appearance at Cork’s Circuit Criminal Court in Cork city in November 2008. On the positive side, his…
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The Twist #7
Don’s arrest and release made for some lurid headlines, fed to the press by the guards and fuelled by a crank call to a local radio station claiming that bank notes and been seen billowing from Don’s chimney, which then morphed into a story of unnamed neighbours claiming that there had been a fire in…
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Lee Child – A Personal Tribute to His Creative Processes
Little did I know that as I began to put down my first words of my debut novel What Goes Around that a writer – also from the West Midlands of England – was coming up with one of the great characters of crime fiction, none other than the iconic Jack Reacher. So, it was…
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A Writer’s Best Friend
We all need a good friend, someone to support and encourage but also someone who will be unflinching when the time comes to tell us that we need to reconsider our attitudes or what we are doing. For a writer, in the first instance, it may be a partner or a colleague who shares a…
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The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
There are many unsung heroic people around the world doing their best to change things for the better. Just using the word ‘change’ is often a challenge to those in authority – who have shaped the world to best suit themselves and their peer groups, and those who seek change are mostly those who have…
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When Malcolm X took on British Racism
Such was the furore following the election in Smethwick in 1964 that the civil rights campaigner Malcolm X was moved to pay a visit.
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Enoch Powell
Wolverhampton became a byword for hostility towards inhabitants who were not white and British when in 1968 Enoch Powell, a local MP, made a speech to his fellow Conservatives in which he called for people like my parents to be repatriated. As warning of what could happen should immigrants continue to be allowed into Britain…
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The Twist
In the coming weeks and months I will be publishing 24 short articles that I wrote following my conversations with the man who was also my literary editor and publisher who became caught up with the investigation into, what was then, the biggest bank robbery ever to have taken place in Ireland or Britain. The…
Ralph Robb 