Violets – a memoir

A news item appeared in the Newark Advertiser on 2nd March 07 about the circumstances surrounding the publication of a full-length book by local author John Smith who lives at Colonsay, Kirton Road, Egmanton. The book is a memoir charting the life of a boy born in the war years to a small tenant farmer on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border using horses to work the land and hand-milking cows and without mains electricity. This boy fails the 11+ but goes on to become a qualified accountant and a senior consultant with the international firm of Price Waterhouse.

The management consultancy assignments take him to Singapore, India and many other places before he joins industry as a line manager rising to a very senior level. There is much about how big business functions, about acquisitions and take-overs and about disasters both corporate and personal.

The later parts of “Violets” deal with the building of a private consultancy practice and the ups and downs of life itself. The book contains a number of poems that punctuate the life course.

The village of Egmanton is credited on page 2 as the place where most writing was done “out of the rat-race, into the peace”

A reviewer commented “You will be drawn back to your bookmark until the final page”

Violets can be bought from John’s website www.jgwalkersmith.co.uk  for £11.99. The website has links to a synopsis of the work and a brief note about the author. Anyone not wishing to access the web can obtain a copy from the author directly on 01777 871226 or 07966 22594. Violets is also obtainable from Amazon at £14.99 or from the public library where it is listed on their supplier’s website “Askeys”