Jeff Hopkins: 11 books

A retired sports’ journalist who we come to know only by his nickname, ‘Lumpy’, decides to tell the life story of one of his earliest and most interesting friends, Robbie Sparrow. The writer is caught in a dilemma; should he ‘tell it like it was’, or sanitise a life for a more palatable...

In 1597 Queen Elizabeth I signed a Royal warrant giving theatre managers Henry Evans, Nathaniel Giles and their deputy, James Robinson authority to ‘impress’ boys to be actors in the second Blackfriars Theatre. In reality it was kidnapping against which there were no laws in Elizabethan England....

Benedict Lovelace engages 19-year-old Tommy Turkin to do some rat catching, renovations, and recruiting for his bold new ‘project’. Minnie Dix joins Tommy to provide some much-needed domestic help for his expanding troupe, which numbers ten when Johnny Sharp arrives. Tommy Turkin’s ‘Golden...

The result when two lives collide unexpectedly cannot be predicted. It might prove a catastrophe, or possibly a catalyst. Twenty-two year old architectural intern, Rawden Phillips, has had all the benefits that nature and nurture could bestow, but he is lost. Australian heiress, Olivia Summer-Hayes,...

The ‘Whizz-kid’ is Jack Burton, a boy from the Goldfields’ town of Kalgoorlie, who wants to be an apprentice jockey. Almost jokingly, Jack’s father ‘Boy’ Burton, suggests that career path, and then has to stand back and watch his son’s introduction to the world of thoroughbred horse...

It is the 25th April 1919 and Captain Christopher Murphy has been invited back to his old school, Guildale College, to deliver an address in the first year of peace after The Great War. When he arrives at East Guildale railway station, which is adjacent to the school, a flood of memories come rushing...

Generis, the son of the Lord Genet of the City State in the north is selected as a human sacrifice. His father is ruled by the legend and the lore and cannot prevent the death of his only son. However, with the help of the Lady Siliqua he does manage to secure a line of succession. When a grandson...

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the very existence of European colonial settlement in New Zealand was under threat. With Queen Victoria's British forces stretched thinly across the globe, the New Zealand colony had to look to its sister colonial states in Australia for support. This ground-breaking...

This is a fascinating prequel to Rocking Horse Rider. The book provides the back-stories of the complex characters in the later novel. Clyde Steadman, the youngest son of Sir Henry and Edith, Lady Steadman, is educated at Winchester College and the University College London and graduates as an outstanding...

That theatre is a business remains a truth often ignored by theatre insiders and consumers of the performing arts alike. The essays in Theatre Symposium, Volume 22 explore theatre as a commercial enterprise both historically and as a continuing part of the creation, production, and presentation of...

Recent years have witnessed a growing fascination with the printed annotations accompanying eighteenth-century texts. Previous studies of annotation have revealed the margins as dynamic textual spaces both shaping and shaped by diverse aesthetic, historical, and political sensibilities. Yet previous...