The Elevation of Audley Masterton Summer 1914. Determined to restore his career and regain the offer of a knighthood after an unfortunate mishap in London, Shakespearian actor-manager Audley Masterton embarks on a tour of the Empire, only to be wrecked on the Skeleton Coast of South-West Africa with a mere handful of survivors. Escaping German internment on a rusty train, he sets about welding them into a new troupe; whilst the endless permutations of young love and jealousy find their echoes in the plays themselves. And as they advance further into the interior, the tragic outcome of his own youthful amour many years ago in Zanzibar comes back to haunt him with ever greater intensity. Rescued from slave traders by an apparent chance encounter with an acquaintance from the past, they are led through the jungle to an Arab fortress and an engagement which is not at all what it seems. Masterton gets his elevation certainly, but not quite in the way he expects. *** Witty, compelling and humane, the novel explores the effects on the lives of the fifteen companions as they are drawn into a rich, complex and frightening confrontation between the Bard and Africa. *****
About the Author: 'I was born in May 1941, just in time for the Battle of Britain. I was a twin and with no cots available, we slept in a chest of drawers. I spent my early years in a terrace house without indoor sanitation or electricity, (but it all seemed very comfortable at the time). It was not until1945 with the War ended, that I first met my father, fresh back from the North Africa Campaign; an unsettling occasion. A single-sex school left its mark; well several actually, split-lip Wednesday being our weekly boxing-lesson; but it was here that I had my first success onstage, as Shylock, which for me was indelible. The Fifties were largely taken up with delivering newspapers, though I do remember Rationing was taken off sweets (for a full twenty-four hours). The Sixties swung by, though in deepest Dorset where I began my teaching it was only the barest tremor. My headmaster claimed to have taught the Beatles, which is something I thought at the time he should have kept to himself. Life then passed in a flash - rehearsals, tutorials, meetings, research, meetings, marriage and children, and more meetings and in the latter years a great deal of time hunched over one kind of screen or another - and then retirement, farming and a near fatal accident. I live now with my dear wife Carole in a farmhouse amidst Cumbria's beauty, and when I'm not setting the world to rights, I make furniture and toys for our ten grandchildren, (whether they like it or not).