A Burnham-On-Sea author has published a new book providing a true tale of tragedy, loss and salvation as a small boy grows up to face the changing world of the 1970s.
Richard Foster’s first book, called ‘Spion Kop’, is set in the 1950’s to 1970’s and is “a warts and all” account of life growing up in a mining community and the secret about his identity kept by villagers for 18 years.
Richard, who writes under the pen name Rich J. Foster, has lived in Burnham-On-Sea since 2020, having moved to the area from Solihull in the West Midlands.
He is a nephew of the late BAFTA award winning writer Arthur Hopcraft who adapted Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for the BBC. He was born in Landywood, a mining village near Cannock, Staffordshire, in 1956.
He says the book centres around “an emotional secret about true identity kept throughout a 1950s and 1960s childhood in a small Staffordshire coal mining community and explosively revealed on his 18th birthday.”
“A true tale of tragedy, loss and salvation as a small boy grows up to face the changing world of the 1970s with its then still strangely repressive attitudes to difference – class, education and sexuality in particular.”
Spion Kop is available for purchase through the Amazon UK.
