What's New
on Tom East's BENYBONT Site as at September 2023?
THE EVE OF ST ELIGIUS was the original volume in the ELDRITCH COLLECTIONS. A new, third, edition became available yesterday, 21st September, 2023. For a short period, the eBook version will be available at a heavily discounted price or FREE. Click HERE for more information.
THE KA OF STEPHEN CHARLES is Tom East's ELDRITCH novel, the third volume in the ELDRITCH SERIES. This was available in July 2023. There were two earlier volumes in the ELDRITCH COLLECTIONS. These are both available as paperbacks and eBooks.
It's Autumn, so I've made a fair start on the 'spring cleaning' of the site. As well as the amalgamation of some sections, like GUESTS, I've started to do some general tidying-up. ANTIQUE POEMS ANALYSED, a sub-section of LITERARY. should now be more cohesive. Although there is a now a smaller number of changes, I've added a few new ones like RANDOM ARROWS and POLITICAL PHOTOGRAPHS FOR THE MILLENNIUM.
The ELDRITCH BLOG has been dormant recently, but it is now stirring back into life. The latest relates to something that actually happened in the Smalls Lighthouse 220 years ago. The story appeared in THE EVE OF ST ELIGIUS and was used as part of the libretto for the opera, FOR THOSE IN PERIL. You can hear a scene from the opera and see the full score of this scene. Invitees (not all of whom I have to know personally) can contribute to the ELDRITCH BLOG and anyone (moderated) can comment on an existing blog.
This is an unsparing first-person account of my endeavours to rebuild a life over a period of 22 years (and counting, I hope). The only promise I can make is that it's not a 'poor me' piece of writing, but I hope there is something in the book that will at least be of interest to those who have suffered any kind of stroke themselves and those close to them.
LP Hartley, in The Go Between said ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ The key word here is differently. In the nineteen-fifties, the time when most of the events in A Fifties' Childhood took place, things were certainly different. Not worse and not better, simply different. We should not to look back through rose-coloured glasses, nor yet though darkly tinted shades.
The book is an attempt to take a detailed and honest look back at a world now gone. It is now AVAILABLE from WATERSTONE'S, WH SMITH and elsewhere. Click HERE for details of availability.
Like a bit of controversy? Judas Iscariot is hardly mentioned in the Bible. There are even two versions of his death. Essentially, he is a cipher for all things bad rather than a person.
But what if his real role was altogether more significant? What if he was nothing less than the writer of the earliest gospel? And what if fragments of the manuscript were found in what is now Iraq, on the eve of the Western invasion in 2003?
Tommy's War: July, 1914, has many strands. Some may see it as primarily a speculative fiction story, others as a romance across the rigid social divisions of the early Twentieth Century. Still others will see it as a family story crossing the generations or as a historical novel (characters include real people as diverse as Queen Victoria and Charlie Chaplin). It can be read as an adventure story. In fact, it is all of those things. Like The Greenland Party, this has a separate part of the website devoted to a few facts about historic and factual matters. This is extensive and includes a number of features not directly connected with the novel, like an eclectic selection of war poetry. The volume is available as both a paperback and an e-book.
