Bibliophile Books: 20 books

Deric Longden was best known for his books which touched millions in print and on screen, and which were critically acclaimed on both the UK and International stage. Many of the stories he told were drawn from his broadcasting days with BBC Radio Derby and BBC Radio Nottingham, where he enjoyed regular...

50 amusing short stories for cat lovers by Emmy and BAFTA-winning author Deric Longden. Broadcaster and speaker, he has written many widely-acclaimed books The Cat Who Came in From the Cold, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Enough to Make a Cat Laugh, A Play On Words and Paws In the Proceedings. Each...

Deric Longden had never thought of himself a cat lover, but from the moment he saw the tiny kitten sitting on an upturned bucket down in the garden he was hooked. Strictly speaking, the little cat belonged to the neighbours, but somehow when it began to rain it seemed only natural to bring him inside,...

Throughout the 1990s, Deric Longden has shared his life with Aileen Armitage and four cats: Thermal, Tigger, Frink and shabby old Arthur. And the cats have found that sharing a life with Aileen can be a very painful business. She hardly ever trips over them these days, but they are always in danger...

In 1990, with a bestselling book behind him, and spurred on by a marriage to the writer Aileen Armitage, Deric Longden took one of the most momentous decisions of his life and moved to a foreign country. Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, with its distinctive manners and customs and its wealth of remarkable...

'A lovely read.' - Good Housekeeping. 'You know, Deric - ten minutes of this rain will do more good in half an hour than a fortnight of ordinary rain in a month.' Deric Longden's mum was a wonderfully endearing, eccentric lady whose passions ranged from pot plants and her beloved...

'A funny, sad, and above all, enormously inspiring story' Clare Francis, Action for M.E. In 1971 Deric Longden's wife Diana fell ill with the mysterious disorder known as ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis). She was unable to move without a wheelchair, and was in almost constant pain. Equally...

Ever since Dame Thora Hird breathed life into the role of Deric Longden’s mother in @Wide Eyed and Legless’. She had been on at him to write a play based on the sequel, ‘Lost For Words’. ‘And don’t hang about, I’m eighty – three, you know.’ But life doesn’t run in straight lines...

‘The whole idea is preposterous. One can’t marry a first cousin!’Particularly for cousins whose mothers have ignored each other for the best part of twenty years. Yet Amy Mallinson is bewildered by her deep feelings for her handsome cousin Charles – far above her in the social scale – and...

This sequel to "Chapter of Innocence", which continues the story of Eva Bowe. Away from her beloved from her beloved Yorkshire home, Eva Bower, whom we first met as an outrageous, enchanting nine year old in Chapter of Innocence, has embarked on her university career with a characteristic...

Two lonely children, neglected in their Victorian nursery form a tragic bond on the wild Yorkshire moors. While the dramas of life, death and madness swirl around their family, like smoke from the mill chimneys nearby, Constance and William cling together and swear a pact in blood that they will...

When charismatic Vincent Gregg becomes the valley’s first socialist MP it is the realisation of the Pearson family’s dream. But his philandering ways soon lose him his seat. Given a second chance by the Great War, Gregg enlists as a private, but once again finds himself torn between greed and...

Jericho Farm, high in the Pennines, has been in the Hemingway family for generations. Although life on the farm was hard, the place has a rugged compulsion for those who lived and worked there. But now James Hemingway was thinking of breaking with tradition and selling up. With his wife tragically...

In the far-off 1950s, Irish shop girl Rosa Sheridan is seduced under the arches of Clondarra's village bridge. To escape from the stigma of being a fallen woman, she escapes to England, where she makes a new life for herself in Hawksmoor. But she can never forget the baby which she was persuaded...