Friday, 13 March 2026

Independent Funeral Celebrant - help with the dying and relatives

Dear Blogger

I have a new addition to the Business Directory

An independent Funeral Celebrant, or Death Doula, helps someone who is dying and their families, offering emotional and practical support. They do not replace doctors or nurses.

chaplaintru.co.uk@gmail.com

Booka Bookshop An evening with Patrick Gale

Dear Blogger

Message from Booka Bookshop

An Evening with Patrick Gale - Love Lane

Wed 25th March 2026 - 7.00pm (doors 6.15pm)
The Holroyd Community Theatre, Oswestry, SY10 7SZ

Join us for an evening with much loved author Patrick Gale as he talks about his new novel Love Lane.

1950s Northern England. Three generations of men, two of women. And A Place Called Winter's Harry Cane has returned from Canada….

When veteran Canadian wheat farmer, Harry Cane is obliged to sell up and sail home to an England transformed by two world wars, his arrival triggers unwelcome self-examination for the family he abandoned, and for whom he has never been more than a distant myth.

His daughter feels duty bound to take him in but is riven with doubt and ambushed by a long buried anger she has never before expressed. Harry's effect on the next generation is less predictable, and enables his granddaughter to deal with an unspeakable trauma, while her gentle husband feels seen for who he truly is.

Can Harry stay and make a new life before it's too late, or will he find himself cast out again, punished for having witnessed and understood too much?

From the rural plains of Canada to 1950s Liverpool and Yorkshire, Love Lane is a searing portrayal of escape and entrapment, and a powerful exploration of what home and family can really be. Less a sequel to A Place Called Winter than an adjacent novel, it's designed to stand alone and will equally excite fans of the earlier novel.

We hosted events with Patrick for his previous novels Take Nothing With You in 2018 and Mother's Boy in 2022. Now, we are delighted to welcome back one of our favourite novelists to celebrate the publication of Love Lane.