Imprint
- Hodder Paperbacks
- Hodder & Stoughton
Biography, Biography: general, Prose: non-fiction
The third volume in Robert Douglas's remarkable life story picks up from the bestselling SOMEWHERE TO LAY MY HEAD and brings us up to the present day.
In his final instalment in his autobiographical trilogy, Robert Douglas takes us through the sixties and into the eighties with his memories of life as a prison officer, and, at the end of his career, as an electricity chargehand driving around the Yorkshire Dales. He tells us of his prison experiences, with anecdotes about many of the most famous criminals in British history the Krays, the Richardsons, the Great Train Robbers, Soviet spies and many more.
Told in the same endearing and fascinating voice that readers of LAST SONG OF THE NIGHT TRAM and SOMEWHERE TO LAY MY HEAD first fell in love with, this volume continues the story of Robert's remarkable journey of self-education, introducing us to larger-than-life characters on both sides of the bars, and evoking a strong sense of social change as Britain emerged from the post-War gloom into the bright lights of the Beatles years.
Praise for At Her Majesty's Pleasure
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'You feel as if you are standing alongside him, scanning the prison wings for trouble' - Glasgow Herald
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His straightforward prose makes the very ordinariness of a condemned man's final days and the speed at which the actual hanging takes place stick in the mind more effectively than any hand-wringing moralising would manage . . . It's a life as lived, honestly told, and worth a shelf full of self-serving political and celebrity false fronts - Scotsman
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As emotional, funny and evocative as its predecessors, this will make you laugh, cry and buy copies for everyone youve ever known - Daily Record
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'Warm, energetic...punchy' - The Sunday Times on SOMEWHERE TO LAY MY HEAD
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Night Song of the Last Tram was one of the most moving autobiographies ever penned by a Scottish writer...Somewhere to Lay my Head takes up where that left off...Once again demonstrating an outstanding gift for evoking the atmosphere and emotions of a time gone by, this wonderfully talented storyteller takes us on a journey that he started as a boy and ended as a man - Daily Record on SOMEWHERE TO LAY MY HEAD
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'It recreates stunningly clear memories of a Glasgow childhood...I laughed until the tears ran down my legs.' - Daily Mail on NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM
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A natural-born writer...pins down all-too-human characters in a sentence or two - and a number of times he made me laugh out loud. He also recaptures the late 1950s and early 1960s, rekindling memories for those of us who were there or thereabouts and bringing them alive for those who weren't - The Scotsman on SOMEWHERE TO LAY MY HEAD
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A well-written slice of social history delivered directly by an eyewitness - Independent on Sunday on NIGHT SONG
Robert Douglas
Robert Douglas retired, aged fifty-five, in 1994. He intended to paint, write short stories and lie about the house watching old films. A one-off article he wrote about six weeks spent with a condemned man in Bristol prison led to him being told 'You should write.'
His first book - the bestselling NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM - is centred around his Glasgow childhood and became the first book in the popular trilogy detailing his life as a miner, dock worker, doss-house resident, soldier, prison screw - and survivor.
He hasn't painted for years.
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