J.L. Carr
Carr was born in Thirsk Junction, Carlton Miniott, Yorkshire, into a Wesleyan Methodist family. His father Joseph, the eleventh son of a farmer, went to work for the railways, eventually becoming a station master for the North Eastern Railway. Carr was given the same Christian name as his father and the middle name Lloyd, after David Lloyd George, the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer. He adopted the names Jim and James in adulthood. His brother Raymond, who was also a station master, called him Lloyd. Carr's early life was shaped by failure. He attended the village school at Carlton Miniott. He failed the scholarship exam, which denied him a grammar school education, and on finishing his school career he also failed to gain admission to teacher training college. Interviewed at Goldsmiths' College, London, he was asked why he wanted to be a teacher. Carr answered: "Because it leaves so much time for other pursuits." He was not accepted. Over forty years later, after his novel The Harpole Report was a critical and popular success, he was invited to give a talk at Goldsmiths'. He replied that the college once had its chance of being addressed by him. He worked for a year as an unqualified teacher — one of the lowest of the low in English education — at South Milford Primary School, where he became involved in a local amateur football team which was startlingly successful that year. This experience he developed into the novel How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup. He then successfully applied to a teacher training college in Dudley. In 1938 he took a year out from his teaching career to work as an exchange teacher in Huron, South Dakota in the Great Plains. Much of the year was a struggle to survive in what was a strangely different culture to him; his British salary converted into dollars was pitifully inadequate to meet American costs of living. This experience gave rise to his novel The Battle of Pollocks Crossing. At the end of his year in the USA Carr continued his journey westward and found himself travelling through the Middle East and the Mediterranean as the Second World War loomed. He arrived in France in September 1939 and reached England, where he volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force. He was trained as an RAF photographer and stationed in West Africa, later serving in Britain as an intelligence officer, an experience he translated into fiction with A Season in Sinji. At the end of the War he married Sally (Hilda Gladys Sexton) and returned to teaching. He was appointed headmaster of Highfields Primary School in Kettering, Northamptonshire, a post he filled from 1952 to 1967 in a typically idiosyncratic way which earned the devotion of staff and pupils alike. He returned to Huron, South Dakota, in 1957 to teach again on an exchange visit, when he wrote and published himself a social history of The Old Timers of Beadle County. In 1967, having written two novels, he retired from teaching to devote himself to writing. He produced and published from his own Quince Tree Press a series of 'small books' designed to fit into a pocket: some of them selections from English poets, others brief monographs about historical events, or works of reference. In order to encourage children to read, each of the "small books" was given two prices, the lower of which applied only to children. As a result, Carr received several letters from adults in deliberately childish writing in an attempt to secure the discount. He also carried on a single-handed campaign to preserve and restore the parish church of Saint Faith at Newton in the Willows, which had been vandalised and was threatened with redundancy. Carr, who appointed himself its guardian, came into conflict with the vicar of the benefice, and higher church authorities, in his attempts to save the church. The building was saved, but his crusade was also a failure in that redundancy was not averted and the building is now a scientific study centre.
30 Books Written
This classic humour novel chronicles the momentous journey of Steeple Sinderby (an unremarkable Fenland village) from the mire of obscurity to national heroics. This unbelievable feat is contrived by the serendipitous meeting of three great Mr Fangfoss (who cares nothing for football), Dr Kossuth - a Hungarian academic and headmaster of the village school, and the Wanderers captain Alex Slingsby, a mighty warrior biding his time in quiet Sinderby for the chance to rise once more. The story takes an affectionate look at small-minded Middle England, and the glories of God's own game while taking in love and death, bigotry, bigamy and good old-fashioned English snobbery.
In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter's depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.
The Harpole Report is the third novel by J. L. Carr, published in 1972. The novel tells the story mostly in the form of a school log book kept by George Harpole, temporary Head Teacher of the Church of England primary school of "Tampling St. Nicholas". Like all of Carr's novels, it is grounded in personal experience. Carr was a Primary School teacher for almost 40 years, including 15 years spent as Head Teacher.
A Day in Summer is the first novel by J. L. Carr, published in 1963. The story is set in the fictional village of Great Minden on the day of its annual Feast (or fair) where RAF veteran Peplow arrives to seek retribution for the death of his son.\n\nCarr started the novel as a part of written work for classes of the Workers' Educational Association and described it as his most technically ambitious novel, so it was \"foolhardy to start with\".Carr sent duplicate copies of the novel to publishers to consider and it was accepted by both the 7th and 8th publishers at the same time.The publishers paid an advance of £50 for the novel.
An English teacher bites off more than he can chew when he ventures to the American Midwest to broaden his horizons In J.L. Carr’s quirky comic novel.When George Gidner, teacher at Balaclava Road Elementary School, Bradford, has an opportunity to spend a year teaching in America, he can’t believe his luck. But Palisades, South Dakota, is a Depression-struck outpost of mind-numbing awfulness in the middle of nowhere: a place where more than a few American dreams are rapidly becoming nightmares - and one of them is the Battle of Pollocks Crossing.
A Season in Sinji recreates life on a wartime RAF flying boat station in an African backwater. The dialogue evokes a wide range of characters, and in the bizarre cricket match which acts as a catharsis to the novel's mounting passions, human dramas and irony are portrayed.
A spirited sixth-former with an unlikely penchant for Keats and Browning, struggles against a brutish home life in the Fens, with a bullying father, down-trodden mother, and nasty little brother. Discovering she was in fact adopted, Hetty gratefully runs away in search of her real parents. She finds shelter in a Birmingham boarding house, where the land-lady, eccentric lodges, race riots and urban living expand her horizons.
Paperback; 2018 reprint (first published in 1992). Signs of a little shelfwear to the spine. Small amount of penned writing on the closing blank page. The binding is sound and all text remains clear. CM
Carr's Illustrated Dictionary of Extra-Ordinary Cricketers
Carr's Dictionary of English Kings, Consorts, Pretenders, Usurpers, Unnatural Claimants and Royal Athelings
by J.L. Carr
Rating: 4.8 ⭐
This BBC Radio collection includes the Booker nominated A Month in the Country. Be transported to the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where, in the aftermath of the First World War, survivor Tom Birkin spends a summer uncovering a medieval mural in the local church. Birkin discovers treasures he thought the war had blown away forever. A tender and beautiful story about spirituality and healing in the aftermath of horror. The Harpole Report tells the humorous story of idealistic young teacher, George Harpole, who decides to shake things up when he becomes acting head of Tampling St Nicholas Primary School. There’s stiff resistance, improper suggestions and children running riot, but true romance may be just around the corner…
What Hetty Did
by J.L. Carr
Middlesex: Architectural and Historical Map
by J.L. Carr
Hampshire: Architectural and Historical Map
by J.L. Carr
Staffordshire: Architectural and Historical Map
by J.L. Carr
A season in Sinji: A novel,
by J.L. Carr
A Month in the Country. 1999
by J.L. Carr
The Red Windcheater
by J.L. Carr
The Dustman
by J.L. Carr
The First Saturday in May
by J.L. Carr
The Garage Mechanic
by J.L. Carr
J.L. Carr
by J.L. Carr
A Christmas Book
by J.L. Carr
Dictionary of Extra-ordinary English Cricketers
by J.L. Carr
Shropshire: Historical and Architectural Map
by J.L. Carr
Durham: Historical and Architectural Map
by J.L. Carr
Dorset: Historical and Architectural Map
by J.L. Carr
Sussex: Historical and Architectural Map
by J.L. Carr