Black Tongue
While cruising the Caribbean in a luxurious yacht, Princess Callalily and her formidable lady-in-waiting are taken hostage by pirates.
Transferred to the pirate ship, they are obliged to adapt to its harsh sea-going conditions.
In the course of the voyage, both parties undergo a sea-change quite foreign to their natures. The royal couple acclimatise to the rough life of the pirate ship, while its captain, Black Tongue, is persuaded to give up his disreputable life and go straight.
Against all the odds, the princess and the pirate fall in love and plan to marry. But will a reformed pirate be acceptable to the princess’s haughty family?
Can Black Tongue survive shame in the eyes of his crew when they discover his real name? Will he make the transition successfully?
Both cheeky and tongue-in-cheek, it is a light-hearted tale, full of quirky characters, including a fictitious Royal Family.
ISBN: 9781852001261
Size: 217x140mm
Binding: hardback
Length: 65pp
11 b&W illustrations
About the author:
John Groves
Born in London’s East End in 1926, and later a survivor of the wartime Blitz there, the author joined the United Kingdom Post Office at the age of fourteen.
Serving nearly four years in the Grenadier Guards, he returned to civilian life and progressed through various Departments of Government, specialising in information services, publicity and the media.
After a short sabbatical, working and studying in Hollywood, USA, he returned to the Post Office, long recognised as a qualified PR specialist in films and broadcasting. Liaising with virtually every news and documentary programme on the air, from Blue Peter to Panorama, he also became, in the late 1960s and early 70s, Government media spokesman on national broadcasting policy, much involved in the great new innovations of colour television, Channel Four, Radio One and local radio. He trained top Post Office management in interviewing skills, between-whiles helping to launch National Girobank, the new concept of postcodes, and working on the separation of BT from the parent company. Accelerated promotion to Deputy Director of Public Relations for the entire United Kingdom Post Office, then arguably the largest business in Britain, rounded off 40 years in public service. His career continued as a professional PR consultant and City correspondent.
His first novel, The Carapace, appeared in 1991, followed by Naked Heaven, Naked Earth, a controversial book of prose and poetry on a theme of environmental philosophy. His first paperback was an anthology, Poetry on Purpose, which appeared in 1994, paving the way, in 1996, for The Chocolate Sword, an anthology of seventy new poems, published in his 70th year. The Learning Curve of Love, 100 new poems for the Millennium, completed the cycle in 1999.
The MCC at Lord’s gave special prominence to his work in their first anthology of cricket verse, published by Methuen in 2004.
