The Golden Apple - Part Two: The Wrath of Achilles (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781515328612)

Ronald McGowan was born more years ago than he cares to remember in what is now the city of Sunderland, in northeast England, but then was the largest shipbuilding town in the world. He attended the local grammar school, turned down a scholarship to Cambridge University because of the conditions imposed, and did a Classics degree at Durham University instead. He had to abandon a Ph.D. course at Yale University because of abject poverty and the sheer necessity of earning a living somehow. After failing to do so for two years as a teacher, he took refuge in the Civil Service, where he spent nearly thirty years in the Administrative Grade before retiring early to get a life. He was part of his school team when they won the BBC "Top of the Form" quiz in 1961, and since then has been on the Durham University "University Challenge" team and the prestigious "Mastermind" quiz programme in the days when both those shows lived up their reputations. His first published novel "Barset Revisited", is a continuation and completion of Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barset, ' Since then he has published "Pride Unprejudiced", a retelling of Jane Austen's famous story from the point of view of her despised clergyman, Mr. Collins, and "What I did in my Holidays", a story of growing-up in his native Northeast, along with the two books in the "Golden Apple" series. All of these are available from Createspace, Amazon, your local bookseller, and also on Kindle He lives near Liverpool with his wife of over forty years, and would be quite pleased and absolutely amazed to hear that anyone actually liked any of his books.