Billy Frecknall is an instinctive fighter, a fighter against injustice of all kinds, even if the odds are heavily stacked against him. He learns quite early in life that many people in this world claim to believe in a fair and just society, but behave quite differently - choosing for themselves which categories of people will benefit from fairness and justice, and excluding the rest. Billy describes prejudice as 'a disease, a virulent and malign disease, a disease of the mind. I have a vision of a brain, ' he says, 'encircled by barbed wire. And barbed wire, I might remind you, has barbs that point both ways. And so does prejudice - it damages both those who harbour it, and those who are its target'. But, despite its serious theme, this is fundamentally a happy book, a book full of hope. How could it be otherwise when Billy Frecknall's aims are identical to those of the founding fathers of the USA: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? There's No Pride In Prejudice is a sequel to Billy's War, but if you haven't read Billy's War already it doesn't matter for now, but you'll almost certainly want to read it afterwards
About the Author: Although he is 83, Tony Whelpton is still working, and planning to publish yet another novel in time for Christmas 2016. He has been writing books for nearly 40 years, but turned to fiction late in life, and so successfully that he wishes he had started earlier! He is the author of 30+ school and college text books - mostly in French - as well as two books on cricket, and a history of the Cheltenham Bach Choir. He was born in Nottingham, England, in January 1933, and was educated at High Pavement Grammar School (where he was taught English by the 1974 Booker Prize winner Stanley Middleton) and the Universities of London and Lille. He taught French for 8 years in Grammar Schools, then for 17 years in a university. He is also an experienced journalist and broadcaster. His 1st novel, Before the Swallow Dares (2012), concerns 2 old school friends who get together after a break of 50 years, as a result of a chance meeting. Then one of them discovers that the other is married to a girl whom he loved at school, but who, to his utter devastation, disappeared without trace and never answered his letters. The Heat of the Kitchen (2013), takes us to Saint-Pierre-sur-Loup, a (fictitious) village in France, where the Mayor is wrestling with a common problem in the south of France: too much traffic for the town. His favored solution succeeds in upsetting most of the inhabitants, and he finds himself in a fight for his political life. The extremely popular novel Billy's War (2014), takes us back to Tony's home town of Nottingham in 1941, a year and a half after World War Two broke out, and begins with an air raid which Tony remembers well. Billy's Mum is killed and his Dad is in the army, and he has to live with his aunt and cousins, who treat him very badly. He runs away to find his father, and the book is the story of his search. Billy's War was so successful, and the character of Billy so popular that Tony decided at an early stage that a sequel was required: There's No Pride In Prejudice is the result. Tony's attitude to life is that it is there for living and, in particular, getting old is not an excuse for sitting around doing nothing; one of his favourite quotations comes from the French cellist Paul Tortelier: 'Everybody should die young - but as late in life as possible'. Now you understand why Tony is still writing!