Author: ambler1

Walter Greenwood is best remembered for Love on the Dole (1933), but he went on writing until the nineteen sixties and remained a popular author. I recently read his last novel and thought it reflected interestingly on his thoughts about later working-class life (depicted in leisure-mode on the dust-wrapper by Douglas Hall in a style… Continue reading Saturday Night at the Crown (1959) by Walter Greenwood

(This review is longer than usual - it seemed best to review the whole trilogy in one). Between 1952 and 1956 Greenwood completed his Trelooe Trilogy (published by Hutchinson – all references are to these first editions). The trilogy was set in Cornwall, where Greenwood had holidayed since meeting the artist Arthur Wragg in the… Continue reading The Trelooe Trilogy by Walter Greenwood [So Brief the Spring (1952), What Everybody Wants (1954) and Down by the Sea (1956)].

Walter Greenwood is, of course, famous as the Salford author of the best remembered thirties depression novel, Love on the Dole, a novel which has had considerable impact, then and since. In fact, he lived for the rest of his life as a professional author, writing new works and adaptations right up until the late… Continue reading Something in My Heart (1944) by Walter Greenwood

Sadly, the dust-wrapper to the first (Cape) edition of The Secret Kingdom is the dullest of all Greenwood's dust-wrappers: But the novel itself is not dull. Walter Greenwood’s father was a hairdresser and by the time he married Elizabeth Matilda Walter he had opened his own hairdresser’s shop (‘Tom’s Hairdressing Saloon’) at 56 Ellor Street,… Continue reading The Secret Kingdom (1938) by Walter Greenwood

  The dust-wrapper to Greenwood's third novel is similar in style to that of both Love on the Dole in its first edition (now almost unobtainable in its dust-wrapper) and his second novel, His Worship the Mayor (1934). In fact, only the dust-wrapper of the third novel is signed, revealing that the iconic chimneys of Love… Continue reading Standing Room Only (1936) by Walter Greenwood