No Precedent by John Uttley

** Competition closed **

No Precedent is the “poignant, funny, thoughtful and raw” sequel to Where's Sailor Jack?, due for release in July 2020 by novelist John Uttley. The northern grammar school pals Bob Swarbrick and Richard Shackleton are back, now facing the era of Brexit, Momentum, Coronavirus and Donald Trump. For the first time in their lives, Bob and Richard struggle to see the meaning of it all.

About No Precedent

The trials and renewals of Where's Sailor Jack? (John Uttley’s debut novel released in 2015) behind them, they find themselves in a world whose faith and politics have moved beyond their sphere of influence and feel increasingly cut off from their roots.

Bob, now settled with Wendy, must reconcile old memories and new children while Richard must save his family from themselves. Along the way, they are adopted by the lascivious Lucy Fishwick and her predatory daughter Maddie, whose lives are as mad and chaotic as the radio play Lucy is trying to write and, indeed, the world itself.

But despite the coming plague, it doesn't look like Armageddon. There is to be an apocalypse, but one of the personal dimensions. We don't all go together when we go!

No Precedent gives some clue as to why Brexit happened and why the red wall fell, not that either protagonist wanted the former, or would have wanted the latter if Harold Wilson were still prime minister. John Uttley knows the towns of the north, the county boroughs as he still calls them, and writes with nostalgia and reflection on times gone by and times yet to come.

No Precedent Extract

I’d better introduce myself, in case anybody ever gets to read this.  You never know, maybe I’ll die before I’ve decided it’s best thrown away.  It’s going to be as near factual as I can manage, as I’m losing my taste for fiction.  Truth’s meant to be stranger than that. I’ve always wanted to write, and something’s happened today which might just end up as interesting.  To me that is, probably not to you.  I’ve often wondered if telling a real story can reveal a hidden meaning. Maybe this is a chance to see.  I’m Bob Swarbrick, born and bred in the Lancashire village of St Chad’s.  It’s at the west end of the Fylde, only a few miles outside Blackpool.  I don’t live there now, having moved away for the second time a few years ago.  My daughter does though, in my old house.  I’m often back with my new partner, Wendy.  The other folk I visit when I’m home, my mother, father and four grandparents, are all resident in the one place, just a few plots from each other, pushing up daisies in the cemetery at the edge of the village.  I’ve a fair number of other relations and a few too many friends in there too.  Decades ago, after my divorce and before Wendy and I got it together, I booked a plot for myself, near enough to the gate for me to look for an escape if I’m sent to the wrong place.  Behind the funeral chapel, which serves both the quick and the dead, is a lavatory, only for the first category as far as I can tell.  I sometimes have to be very quick in getting there nowadays.  I’m past my three score and ten, and not too long ago I had a big heart attack, so it may not be long before I’m six feet under..

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Blog Tour

If you'd like to know more about John Uttley and No Precedent, why not check out his Blog Tour currently running until 27th July.

About the Author

John Uttley was born in Lancashire just as the war was ending. Grammar school educated there, he read Physics at Oxford before embarking on a long career with the CEGB and National Grid Group. He was Finance Director at the time of the miners’ strike, the Sizewell Inquiry and privatisation, receiving an OBE in 1991. Shortly afterwards, he suffered his fifteen minutes of fame when he publicly gave a dividend to charity in the middle of the fat cat furore. Following this, he took an external London degree in Divinity while acting as chairman of numerous smaller companies, both UK and US-based. He is married to Janet and living just north of London. This is his second novel, based on the characters of his first, the much-loved and critically acclaimed Where’s Sailor Jack?