Gordon unlocks writing talent
A‘ROSSENDALE Lad’ who has led a packed and colourful life has completed and revised two novels during the pandemic - at 90 years young.
The fruits of nonagenarian Gordon Hartley’s lockdown labours are all now available in paperback on Amazon Books and published under “G W Hartley.”
The two novels are also available on Kindle.
In Mama Beauty the heroine goes to work at a cotton mill called Isaac Harrisons in a place called Colesclough, which Gordon says is based on David Whitehead and Sons in his home town, Rawtenstall, which he joined as a management trainee in 1953 after graduating from Queens’ College, Cambridge. At Lower Mill he met his wife to be the late Joan Dugdale, a well known member of Bacup Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society.
Gordon has also pub
lished ‘The Hartleys’, researched by his late brother, Prof. Brian S Hartley FRS. Brian was the first Bacup & Rawtenstall Grammar School student
to win a scholarship to Cambridge, became Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College, and later set up their Department of Biotechnology.
The family story is brought up to date with ‘The Hartleys of Rossendale’, and finally Gordon added a memoir of his world cruise - ‘Following Jules’.
Joan and Gordon starred together in local productions and joined drama groups in Nigeria and Tanzania after moving to Africa to pursue Gordon’s work in the textile industry. They also lived in Zambia and Nepal before settling in Lewes on the south coast.
Gordon said: “Though I now live in East Sussex I was born in Rawtenstall and remain a ‘Rossendale Lad’. I still have my 1950s Rossendale Players photos on the computer.”