Just out from Colwell Hopper – SALISBURY SAPPHIRES – a collection of his best Salisbury poems – details.
The Jon Ball thrillers
“Colwell Hopper weaves fascinating and believable stories of espionage and skulduggery at the highest level. Jon Ball is everybody’s favourite big brother – modest, capable, formidable.”
Who is Jon Ball?
Oh yes. Jon. Yes. You know he’s friendly with that girl on TV? The journalist with the funny name. Wears bikinis a lot. So if there was a leak… I didn’t mean… Never mind. I think Jon’s wife wanted him out of the Army. And he was PV to SECRET so he joined the MOD. No idea what Jon did in Afghan. He’d passed some SAS courses. Not sure which ones. Quiet sort of chap. He helped in my IPT a few times when I was, uh… You know. He was good on computers. Finding things. Making sense of them. He could give me a single sheet of paper that explained all… Never mind.
The thing is, Jon found a lot of discrepancies. Double accounting. Theft, swindles, contract problems, back handers. Those trucks that never existed. Selling those missiles to… All hushed up of course. Don’t want Parliament involved. He made a few people look stupid. So, Jon’s not popular with… Never mind. There were threats and violence. But he sticks at it. Doesn’t give up. I heard that… Never mind.
His permanent post was with Sandrine Cashford. The blonde one with the… Never mind. Future Planning Department. I never found what they really did. Very vague. And you know her ex husband is Peter Cashford. That’s the one. Behaves as if he’s a serving Colonel. No real authority at all. Just a contractor. Waves his ID round Number Ten and Whitehall like he owns the… Never mind. Cashford is not a gentleman. He’s rather too political. Not the sort of chap I’d get involved with. Dirty business. But I hear Jon works for him. No. I don’t know what he’s involved with now. It’s all just rumour isn’t it.
★★★★★ Amazon 5 Star review
Another easy job. Till the shooting starts…
A secret so terrible it could bring down Britain…
The secrets behind Salisbury’s Nerve Agent poisonings…
A beautiful woman goes missing, for all the wrong reasons…
Someone wants to start a civil war in Britain…
Colwell’s Poetry
Funny, profound, but always interesting…
A Collection of Colwell’s most important poetry
Novichok, Covid and the Solstice
Poems on Brexit, Britain, and life
Bed is warm.
My lover says.
Phone in sick.
Poems on life in Britain today
The Matter of Britain
1,740 pages, 640,000 words, The Matter of Britain is a major reference work, a compilation of all mentions of Britain up to 650 CE.
“I intended collecting all primary written sources together in date order. This would give a clear narrative of events in Roman and Dark Age Britain. Of course, I failed.
There are no real primary sources. For centuries everything was re-copied, translated, and glossed over. Then there were my subjective decisions on which versions to use. What religious discussion or Roman political intrigue would I leave out to save space? I have put in the secondary source works of Sabine Baring-Gould, (SBG) because I could find little else. Worse, I have edited and cut his work to a more succinct length.
And what was Britain? I am part Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish. So, I include Ireland, but many do not. Then what about Brittany? Northern Gaul? Germany? Surely events there affected Britain?
Thus, my original clear narrative became a heap of odd facts in rough date order.
I invite you to make the best of it.” Read more >>