“With God’s help – and with yours – we will see those temples, built and inhabited and doing their blessed work.” There was tremendous determination in her voice. “And if anything I have said tonight advances that idea, that vision, one single foot on its way, then I have not spoken in vain … Good night, and God bless every one of you.”

The applause caught up her last words, so that as she stood there, her hands lifted, her face losing its immobility and beginning to soften, she seemed to be drowning in its thunder. The noise was deafening – a solid cataract of sound breaking over her, in wave after wave of acclaim and worship.

Then, after a moment, raised arms began to appear among the audience, waving cheques and bills. The moving points of white and green sprouted and spread: soon the whole auditorium, from the floor to the highest gallery, was in a solid flutter, like a forest under thickening snow. Beneath the snow were voices clamouring to give … The hands with the cheques and bills seemed to be surging towards Mrs Bannister, bringing bright hope for the future.

Synopses of Nicholas Monsarrat Titles

Published by House of Stratus

A Fair Day’s Work Liverpool Docks, on Merseyside - a senseless strike threatens to delay the departure of an ocean liner. As the last of the passengers come aboard, including the shipping line’s chairman, the drama increases with the threatened walk-out of the stewards. Below deck, agitation and unrest mount as the tide water rises and the vital hour for sailing approaches.

H.M.S. Marlborough Will Enter Harbour In H.M.S. Marlborough Will Enter Harbour, an old sloop, homeward bound, is torpedoed, leaving her guns out of action, more than three-quarters of her crew dead, and radio contact impossible. But her valiant captain steadfastly refuses to surrender his ship… In Leave Cancelled, an army officer and his young wife concentrate their passionate love into twenty-four hours, knowing that it might be their last chance… And in Heavy Rescue, an old soldier, having lived on the scrap heap for more than twenty years, finds that gallantry is once again in demand when he becomes leader of a Heavy Rescue Squad…

Life Is A Four Letter Word Breaking In is the first part of the autobiography of one of the most successful writers of the twentieth century, Nicholas Monsarrat. Monsarrat describes his privileged childhood in Liverpool, where his father was the greatest surgeon of his time, recalling all the small details of a provincial upbringing. The account of his days at public school are acidly described, and in remarkable contrast to his golden days at Cambridge, where he enjoyed good friends, good wine and little work. At twenty-three, Monsarrat turned his back on his comfortable family home, fled from the desk of his uncle’s solicitor’s office, and settled in a single, mildewed room in London, with a typewriter and a half-finished manuscript. Here, he describes the years of learning to write, learning to live and learning to love – invaluable lessons for a future which comprised war, emigration, marital upheaval and the hazards of artistic achievement. The second part, Breaking Out, takes us up to the year in which Monsarrat produced the novel widely acclaimed as his finest, The Tribe That Lost Its Head; the year when he was living in Ottawa as Chief of the British Information Services; the year he calls ‘The Year of the Stupid Ox’. As Monsarrat charts the first half of his life with astonishing frankness, we are given a stunning portrait of this complex character, this brilliant storyteller.