Blogs

This is an excerpt form my latest book that blasts business practices from the 80s still used today and this Blog from Michael Fitzalan Books: ‘The Accountant and his comeuppance’ is an extract from a book that does to accounting what Animal Farm did for Communism.

Michael Fitzalan describes the night when he met the ghost of a child cruelly punished at Le Gothique at the Royal Patriotic Building in Wandsworth

Christmas Kerfuffle – A seasonal short story.  

Bill Kermode enjoyed living in the quiet backwater that was Furzedown, a south London suburb.

Meet Me Later

21 Days in Winter

Copyright 2023 by Michael Fitzalan

If a statue is toppled into the sea
Make a new face from a foundry
If someone sets your flag alight
Weave anew with colours bright
Injustice must make you seethe
I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe

If a statue is toppled into the sea
Make a new face from a foundry
If someone sets your flag alight
Weave anew with colours bright
Injustice must make you seethe
I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe

PLEASE STOP POISONING YOURSELF WITH PLASTIC – https://www.env-health.org/turning-the-plastic-tide-the-chemicals-in-plastic-that-put-our-health-at-risk/

As she is abducted and taken across the border, a scientist reflects on how she ended up in such a precarious position. Working at one of the world’s leading biological research institutes seemed like a dream job. Her mentor, Professor Akshay Gupta has discovered a secret that in the wrong hands could result in millions of deaths. Someone wants the secret and he has to be protected. When those going after him realise that she knows the secret, too, her life is turned upside down and she has to use all her wit and intelligence to keep one step ahead of the others. Andy, Hardeep and Linda help her to prevent the secret falling into the wrong hands. Interest becomes a flood of unwanted attention and she has to use every ounce of initiative to escape and preserve humankind.

How could you fail to enjoy the facilities at a boarding school? There was so much to do and so much to learn. Harry Hollister was happy at school until Stephen Inglis arrived. Suddenly, he feels threatened and then Stephen tries to run away. Harry challenges Stephen to a dare to settle things once and fall all. Beaten by the head for bullying, Harry has worse ordeals yet to come.

Everyone works from home, so we do not hang around after the session, chatting. We just thank Martha, promise to see each other next week and put away the equipment. Cycling back to the house, I shower and prepare for the evening sessions of tutoring English for entrance examinations, eleven-plus and thirteen-plus as well as GCSE. I have at least one tutee at their home, and I try to cycle there even if in a cloudburst. Eating a late lunch of avocado and brown bread, I mark, send emails and choose comprehensions for us to examine, explore and answer or come up with story titles for us to write. My favourite is ‘The Fence’. I have been sitting on it all my life.

It is my day off so I work on my other play for the rest of the day.

I am writing a play dedicated to Niko Louvros who was a shining beacon of humanity and humility.

ELIZABETH, EXTINCTION REBELLION, REGINA

It’s about an immigrant family who have made good in the UK, I have not decided whether they are Bangladeshi, Ghanian Indian, Jamaican, Kenyan, Malay, Nigerian, Hong Kong Chinese or Irish.

Anyway, the daughter is somewhere between Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. However, she wants the government and the civil servants replaced by a citizen’s assembly made up or representatives from the 133 councils in England, supplemented by representatives from each of the professions and all the services, such as postal, rail and maritime, farming, fishing and technology.

It’s a screenplay.

The ghosts in Ghost Storey are real and they haunted Michael Fitzalan’s life.

If you have never been to the west coast of Ireland, perhaps, you may not be able to appreciate the glorious green of the perfect pastures. From the verdant verges to the gently rolling undulations of the hills, the country looks like it was blanketed in the colour that gives the republic its name, the Emerald Isle. Around the place, there are the dry-stone walls, feats of amazing engineering, rocks of tremendous size piled high one upon another in such a skilful pattern that they stay upright, a boulder barrier between fields.

Every silver lining has a cloud and Ireland’s gloomy, grey skies put off many settlers. Then, there’s the rain, the rain, the rain; you need an awful lot of water to get green as vivid as the colour of the landscape and does it pour; it pours, drumming on the roof; it pours, sluicing along the gutters; it pours, gurgling down the drainpipe. You do not visit Ireland for the weather.

Opportunities lie in the successful cities: Dublin, Cork, and Galway to name a few. New offices for tech and services have replaced the old timber and linen mills, ghosts from the past.

So, what does Ireland have in spades? Its history and its beauty. Is it enough, though in a country bled of its population, in the famine and, by subsequent emigration to busier places? They say that Ireland is a great place to visit, and the education is very good indeed but to live there takes a certain fortitude and a love of water: streams, lakes, rivers, and rainwater, running down your neck, soaking your cuffs and leaking into your boots.

Our story is not about the place, as such, but a building within that setting. There are cutesy cottages and fine rambling mansions like the Guinness’s old place, Ashford Castle, though those are few and far between. On the west coast of Ireland, where our story takes place, many have been preserved, others rot as the ground around them claims the brick back to its birthplace, deep within the clay soil.

Our story concerns one such glebe. The only glebe with a ghost.

A ghost that lives in the room on the half landing, a mirror image of the room on the other side but through generations its presence has made itself known. If you feel that ghosts do not exist, read on. If you have ever suffered some of the exceptional experiences that fill my story, you will know, now, that you are not alone.

Ghosts exists.

They are not just in your head.

My ghosts stack up like the storeys of a building, one floor after another. Some of them I have inherited from my mother, the ghost in the bedroom, her survival, my grandfather’s ghosts, the ghosts of friends who helped me when they lived, the ghosts who helped from beyond the grave. Moreover, however, haunting feelings that my life should have been better or that I could have given back more swirl in my mind.

All these storeys have a moral, which you can easily discover. Do you tell stories to teach your young and learn from your old? What ghost stories stack up in your life and are there more storeys than you can count in the haunted house that is your mind?

Here I share mine.

She was at her wits end, that’s what she thought, she liked comfortable cliches; they had a regular rhythm and the helped her feel safe. They were like a mother’s hug she decided, always there when you needed them, reliable and solid unlike her extremely annoying husband.

A Solicitor’s ghost helped me – Chapter Three – A ghost that helped me For those who know England well, this story might seem strange, but I was merely twenty, so I was not very used to travelling. Carlisle was too far.

The truth about the conspirators: Guido, innocent; Robert Catesby, innocent; Grenville Markham and Robert Cecil, these two were the true plotters. We have been told a propaganda story for too long. Gullibly swallowing Robert Cecil’s rhetoric throughout the centuries. Now, you have to read the true story and understand that government lies can last centuries.

Robert Cecil was losing influence at court – annoying since he had arranged for James to become the King. Favourites had influence on James but with the help of some gullible Catholics desperate to please him, he set the Gunpowder trap. Cecil would foil the plot and win the favour of the King and gain control once again

Robert Cecil and the lie that was the Gunpowder Plot! Knyvett made haste to the King’s palace, at Whitehall and told the news both to the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Robert Cecil, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Suffolk, Thomas Howard.  Then, the two men would see that Guido never saw his friends again. […]

  Guy Michael Fitzalan and the Captain of the Guard – Chapter One, i, Getting the Sack, 4th November 1605 “Captain of the Guard,” cried a sentry, his voice echoing off the vaulted cellar ceiling. The sound of footsteps filled the brief silence that the sentinel’s voice had created. Even the rats scurrying about the […]

The story of how the missing items led to the second search and the arrest of Guy Fawkes

. Robert Cecil stood under the gable of the cloister. His cape pulled around his body, accentuating his slim silhouette. It was dawn. He watched his breath cloud before his eyes as he surveyed the red-brick. Looking at the dozens of chimneys and the multitude of dark windows, searching for a candle light or some […]

    Cecil framed Guido Fawkes -The Trap The morning of the 8th November 1605, at Holbeche House, in Staffordshire, was peculiar for its lack of birdsong. The occupants had been tending to a man recently blinded and filling the time that they waited for their companions by talking. The eerie silence outside went unnoticed. […]

Michael Fitzalan’s Blog Appeal for supermarkets to put solar panels on their roofs, car parks and their warehouse roofs to save energy.

  Lucy was on her first gin of the day after gallons of coffee; we had just ordered beer. Still, we waited for news of our imminent audience with the Kabaka, Freddie Mutesa. Apparently for the last two days Pip, Anna, Duncan and Lucy had waited for a summons from The King of the Buganda, […]

Portugal and its pleasures – a place to visit for sure. Do not forget Waterwitch when you go.

Michael Fitzalan eating out with friends who do believe in tipping properly.

About Harry and the Boarding School Bully He knew that a master would be down to supervise the boys within a few minutes and he knew that on Tuesdays it was Mr. Hinchcliffe. He was one of the teachers at school that Stephen really liked. Hinchey was kind to everyone.Mr. Hinchcliffe was kind hearted, knowledgeable […]

The days of dancing on tables with friends in the Fulham Road

I have a simple solution to help to address some of the poverty in this country, the United Kingdom which is middle class employers, pay your cleaners’ tax and pension contributions on their pay. Now, you pay your cleaners cash, knowing full well that you are potentially robbing the revenue of income. You know the state pension will not adequately support your cleaner in old age.

Mount Kilimanjaro by Michael Fitzalan Major Bruton’s Safari – seeing the magic mountain. The good and the bad

Pilot looking out for green clouds on a flight to Entebbe from MBS or Major Bruton’s Safari by Michael Fitzalan, a stormy flight from Murchison Falls. The magnificent falls are pictured.

Running out of fuel on Lake Victoria Major Bruton’s Safari Michael Fitzalan.

Sir Edward Frederick Mutesa II – Michael Fitzalan tells the story of his murder in Major Bruton’s Safari, which is recreated here.

Sir Edward Frederick Mutesa II Michael Fitzalan tells the story in Major Bruton’s Safari, reproduced here.

  Master of Disguise, Michael Fitzalan M.O.D. -– MASTER OF DISGUISE – MARK O’DOWD All rights reserved. No part of this script may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. One: […]

Travel and napping were in my DNA. I actually dreamt of a few days before the kidnap. The day when I should have realised that I had been found out.

Harry by Michael Fitzalan Chapter One – The Escape  It was not the best day to escape from school, in a foreign land.  Boom, the thunder rent the silence, a stunning sound of such violence that Stephen’s chest-cavity shook. Clouds scudded across the sky, grey stratus sheets, layer upon layer of oppressive pressure; it was […]

  Some Simple Shopping and Traffic Blocking Before leaving the office the way that I came in, through the Portakabin, I promised profusely to be at the bar on time. It took all my acting ability to pretend to be enthusiastic about our meeting later on in the day. My good mood had evaporated quicker […]

Slippery Cecil Robert Cecil made the whole of the Gunpowder Plot up. his lie was so convincing everyone believed him. Chapter One, The Missing Items, 4th November 1605 On the first floor, in a room connected to the Palace of Westminster, a roaring fire danced in the grate, a basket of large logs promised a warm […]

Waterwitch  Soon we were free from the swamp and out into the open sea. We held our course south, southeast for an hour, before tacking back and heading east into the true entrance of Olhao. Then, we clipped along merrily and within three hours we could see the navigation lights of the harbour, red and […]

Michael Fitzalan fed up with Six Shot.

Jubile  Chapter One  – A Seven Taste  1977 was a momentous year. We called it seventy-seven; the DJ on Capital called it Seveny-Seven. If you did not listen to Capital Radio, you were not worth knowing. To listen to ‘Radio One’ was heresy, even if it was the weekend top forty, both radio stations aired their singles chart on […]

Ghost Storey Michael Fitzalan   Ghosts exists. They are not just in your head. My mother’s Story My mother was the first in our family to encounter the man shot in the half-landing bedroom. George had taken the car to Galway driving the three children to collect some food for supper. Josephine was left alone […]

2029 A Book of Our Time A glimpse into the future. 2029 A tale of love and betrayal in a dystopian post-Brexit Britain A tale of post-Brexit smugglers, love and betrayal in a dystopian society Prelude  Momentarily, I was the happiest person on the planet; I even joined in their splashing of each other and […]

Major Bruton’s Safari Set in Uganda, this East African adventure brings into sharp focus the wonderful warmth of the people. Preparations for a coronation lead to a family visiting Uganda. The family, travelling to Africa as a group for the first time, know that adventures and disasters await. It is not what life throws at […]

If you have never been to the west coast of Ireland you may not be able to appreciate the glorious green of the perfect pastures. From the verdant verges to the gently rolling undulations of the hills, the country looks like it was blanketed in the colour that gives the republic its name, the Emerald […]

A Writer’s Journey When did you first start to write? Can you remember what you wrote about? I remember being rewarded for my creative writing by being in the termly school magazine at Moor Park. The school featured in ‘Harry’ and those were generally recounts or poems. My first attempt at a novel was at […]

  My wife and I, Alexander and Barnaby, used to go to Cornwall every summer for a week with my in-laws. We stayed in the charmingly named Portwrinkle, in the forgotten corner of Cornwall. Most people would whizzed past on their way to Newquay, Padstow, Rock or St. Ives. Often, we would stay in an […]

The author Michael Fitzalan How it started?    My taste for writing started with my English teacher Mr Hinchliffe  Even though we were only eight, he introduced the class to The Hobbit, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe as class readers. It did allowed us to respond in pictures, words through creative writing and […]