Guided tour will prove a literary treat
CAPTAIN Frank H Shaw (18781960) was a prolific writer who published his first piece in the Huddersfield Examiner in 1904. He was the son of wealthy photographer John Edward Shaw, of Burlington House near Greenhead Park, and educated at Spring Grove Board School and the Technical School.
During a full and productive life, he served in the First World War and published 65 books, plus short stories and novellas, and innumerable articles for newspapers and magazines, for boys as well as adults. Oh yes, and he also wrote plays and for radio and film.
Old friend Chris Marsden, former chairman of Huddersfield Civic Society, who has been compiling a list of his works, told me about him, and wonders if any reader has copies of three particular books of his: Life Owes Me Nothing ( 1948), Seas Of Memory (1958) and Splendour of the Seas (1953).
Chris will be leading a Literary Walk on Sunday, March 31, at the end of the 10-day Huddersfield Literary Festival which starts on Thursday. He will tour the town, stopping at locations with connections to writers national and local, where they – or a representative – will read a short piece from their work.
I used Huddersfield Library extensively while researching my first book, in the days before the internet. Chris, who was then a librarian, was a great help and he shared the book’s dedication in 1987. He also, purely for publicity’s sake, carried a copy to the top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps.
Across the road from the Library at that time, was the Examiner office in Ramsden Street, and it is from its steps that I have been asked to contribute a brief piece.
The walk is advertised as: “A 90 minute guided tour of Huddersfield places known to Charles Dickens, Jan Morris, Harold Pinter and George Bernard Shaw, their stories and much more.”
Including me and Captain Frank H Shaw. (Book in advance, £3, from huddlitfest.org.uk <http:// huddlitfest.org.uk>).