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John Uttley

THE LAST VICTORIAN AND THE FIRST BABY BOOMER

The home of the author of The Unholy Trinity Trilogy

Where's Sailor Jack? - No Precedent - The Dove Is Dead

John's BLOG

My First Adam

                                  My blog about Bob Dylan was probably deliberately told to make me look as hip as possible from the earliest age. Before I’d discovered the wonders of Bob aged seventeen, I’d been into Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Roy...

Chanting

Seeing all the footage from the past shown on television since Corbyn’s accession, I’ve realised that I have a character trait which prevents me from ever being on the extremes of politics. I’d never be able to chant at a protest rally. Admittedly, it’s pretty...

Self identity from sporting allegiance

Where’s Sailor Jack? makes great play on the allegiance of Bob Swarbrick and Richard Shackleton to their separate towns' football teams and to the county cricket team they share. Bob is from Blackpool so on return to the north-west he bought a season ticket for...

Against Certainty

For me, the experience of living is too rich to think that a rule book can contain all the answers, certainly not any declaration of rights drafted by lawyers but not even the wonderful piece of literature that is the Bible. As they live their lives, people still...

You cannot be serious…

Reviewers of my novel Where’s Sailor Jack refer to my northern, or even my Lancastrian, sense of humour. I don’t mind that. They must mean Lancastrian because Yorkies are not known for cracking a joke or a smile, the estimable Joe Root aside. But my county, which can...

On Marriage

My novel, Where’s Sailor Jack, has two main male characters. Bob struggles to come to terms at being sent off by his wife before half-time in their marriage match, Richard doesn’t get why he’s not brought on until the second half for his. They both take marriage...

Getting Older

I’ve just been interviewed about my book Where’s Sailor Jack by The Wireless, Age UK’s radio channel. It’s now available here. Being asked made me realise how old I’d got. I tuned in before going along to see what the channel was about, expecting to hear Bing Crosby...

His Bobship – A life shared with Bob Dylan

I was in the upper sixth in 1963, the year made famous by Philip Larkin for the discovery of sex. Not in my world, it wasn’t. That took a few more years. A northern grammar school boy, what else could I be studying but Maths, Physics and Chemistry? Twenty miles down...

The Author is God

I’ve sometimes heard fanciful people suggest that all creation is no more or less than an idea in the mind of God, that includes us humans too. I’ve never accepted this. I can’t dismiss the things I feel in life, physical and mental, as belonging to someone else, nor...

On Family

I’ve written a family saga, so I guess that family must mean a lot to me. With the wonders of modern technology, I’ve carried out my personal genealogy, to find that I am fifteen sixteenths English and one sixteenth North Welsh. The English members were, in the...

Fracking in the North

Lancashire County Councillors have said no to fracking on the Preston New Road site at Little Plumpton near Blackpool, having previously refused permission at the more difficult to access Roseacre Wood site. I’m an ex pat Lancastrian, born in Blackpool Victoria...

Business in Public and Private Sectors

Where’s Sailor Jack? makes some play on the differences between public and private sector attitudes to business. As a former CFO of the mighty Central Electricity Generating Board, followed by the privatised National Grid Group and a later career as Chairman of...

The North South Divide

I’ve spent most of my life denying that I’m a professional northerner. It sounds too chippy. But it’s not that there isn’t plenty to be chippy about. Recently I was reading Max Hastings claiming that London was just so obviously the cultural centre of Britain. Another...

Is Sailor Jack anywhere?

To write a novel suggests a belief in more than the physical. It’s saying that there’s a meaning to be understood in a tale as it unfolds that is better expressed in the telling than in a set of equations. Maybe some mathematician could come up with a Maxwell-type...