About Mules; Masters & Mud: The Continuing Story of The Quarry Bank Runaways by G J Griffiths:
“If you want to understand why Peterloo took place read this book.”
“I adore the rich, evocative regional dialects and brogue in this novel. Kudos to Griffiths…”
What measures success or failure when you come from the workhouse? Mules; Masters & Mud is about what happened to our two cotton mill apprentices, the Quarry Bank runaways, during the Industrial Revolution. It tells their story as qualified young mule spinners with future hopes, and later when they are full grown. By the start of the Victorian period the fates and their ambitions would have collided. Serious events and incidents, personal and national, including the Peterloo Massacre, were about to impinge upon the lives of Thomas Priestley and Joseph Sefton. What would cause a qualified mule spinner to give up his comparatively safe job and risk failure, ridicule or destitution? Ambitious and determined working class individuals like Tommy and Joe had to carefully step through a pathway involving love and loyalty; persecution and prejudice, from within the social hierarchy of the times.
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Author Bio:
G J Griffiths is a retired science teacher, with some early working experience of the photographic industry, who greatly enjoys being a grandad. Born in the UK he enjoys reading most genres of fiction such as sci-fi, crime/detective thrillers, historical and wildlife stories. Non-fiction reading mainly includes scientific or historical books. Walking in the English, Scottish or Welsh countryside with binoculars ready for bird-watching or other wildlife is a particular pleasure. Seeing badgers and otters in the wild recently was an exciting first. His first novel was Fallen Hero. The So What! series of three books followed and these are all focussed around the fictitious Birch Green High School. They include: book 1, So What! Stories or Whatever!; book 2, So What’s Next! and book 3, So What Do I Do? Each book is quite different in its overall context, e.g. a collection of the teachers’ experiences; the creation of a school nature corner; and arson, fraud and murder investigated by detective Shantra, an ex-pupil from BGHS. More recent works include poetry: Dizzyrambic Imaginings; two illustrated children’s sci-fi stories about ant-size aliens, Ants in Space and They’re Recycling Aliens; and a historical fiction based upon real characters from the Industrial Revolution period, called The Quarry Bank Runaways. The inspiration to write The Quarry Bank Runaways and Mules; Masters & Mud came about after reading The Real Oliver Twist by John Waller, a biography of Robert Blincoe, and acting as a tour guide around the Quarry Bank Mill Museum in England. There to discover the existence of the real apprentices and the lives of many child cotton apprentices during the Industrial Revolution. If you ever enjoy reading one of G J Griffiths’ books please share your enjoyment with other readers and post a review of it. This is very helpful for new writers and he would be pleased to hear from you on a Comments page at his website: https: //www.gjgriffithswriter.com