The first Amazon review of my new book “Everyone Has A Story”
“This is, in a sense, the third part of a brilliantly conceived trilogy. The first took the form of a fairly conventional ‘memoir’, written essentially for family friends and former colleagues. But even here, the focus, foreshadowing later works, is on all the people Roger met during his three-quarters of a century who have illuminated his life and ‘made’ him ‘what he is’.
In the second book, Roger decided that the residents in the block in which he lived were not only fascinatingly diverse but deeply interesting. And so he set out to interview about forty of his neighbours, devoting an enthralling individual chapter to each. Certainly more imaginative than asking to borrow a cup of sugar!
In this third and latest work, entitled ‘Everyone has a Story’, our doughty author – also an impossibly prolific and indefatigable blogger (vide his weighty ‘NightHawk’) – chose more than 30 friends and acquaintances, each of whom has an extraordinary tale to tell and in whose pen portraits Roger has highlighted a particularly gripping motif. In his painstaking interviews, presented in a highly readable, conversational style, Roger has clearly laid out just how varied, instructive, and life-affirming, his extremely wide range of interests are. This will already be obvious to anyone who regularly reads his highly eclectic blog.
Space does not permit me to reference all but a few of his interviewees or to delve into their intriguing life stories, many of which were surprising and inspirational, but all of which have had a profound impact on the author. Highlights include a lifelong human rights activist, a consumer advocate, a senior trade unionist, survivors respectively of war, revolution and a kidnapping, a highly competitive marathon runner, a Holocaust historian, a champion of digital inclusion and someone who came back from the dead.
I heartily recommend this remarkable collection of tales, which has something of interest for everyone.”