It took me almost five years to complete my novella ‘The Londoner – Origins’ after releasing my first book. The delay was mainly due to my being lost as a writer.
I wasn’t happy with what I was writing.
It wasn’t me.
I am happy to stand over The Londoer series now. It’s something that I am both deeply proud of and have invested much of myself in.
I really hope to find its audience.
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‘The Londoner: Origins’ follows the main character Jimmy Walsh as he navigates his way through the challenges of growing up on an 80s East London council estate, before eventually finding himself on the streets of Dublin.
THE WAY OUT
There were many ways the youth of that era tried to escape that life. Some fell into music. Some fell into business. Some fell into crime. Some fell into boxing. Or if you were the Kray twins in the 1950s, you did the last two.
This short extract from the TV documentary ‘Fighters’ (1992) gives a real flavour of what it meant to these young men from that area to become professional boxers. Tragically, Bradley Stone, who was the first boxer interviewed in this extract, died in 1994 after contracting a blood clot on the brain during one of his fights.
A stark reminder of what many young men risked to chase this dream.
RICH HISTORY
The East End has a rich history with this sport. Bethnal Green bare-knuckle world champion Daniel Mendoza is widely credited with inventing the left jab and lateral footwork. Even more remarkable, this was in 1787.
Since then, the East End has produced more champions at amateur and professional levels than any other region in the UK. The motivations for young men to pursue this dream seem to be timeless. Boxing is as East End as cockney rhyming slang, jellied eels, and the Krays.
My main character, Jimmy Walsh, was also captivated as a young man. The dream did not quite go to plan for him, and he ended up being more like Ronnie Kray than Henry Cooper…
