Patsy Trench
ALLi Author Member
Location: United Kingdom
Genres: Biography, History, Humour, Memoir, Narrative Nonfiction, Commercial Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Short/Flash Fiction Collection, Womens Fiction
BOOKS: NON FICTION Australia: a personal story series Book 1: 'The Worst Country in the World' (2012). The extraordinary beginnings of colonial Australia, as seen through the eyes of my ancestors. Book 2: 'A Country To Be Reckoned With' (2016). How Australia transformed itself in the 19th century from 'the worst country in the world' to 'a country to be reckoned with', as witnessed by my g-g-grandfather. Book 3: 'Australia And How To Find It' (2019): a cornucopia of odds and sods about that fascinating country: why swimmers, male and female, once had to wear skirts for bathing; how the miracle of the Opera House came into being against all the odds, what famous authors such as Mark Twain and Anthony Trollope had to say about Australia, and other quirky bits of nonsense. FICTION Modern Women Breaking the Mould. The Roaring Twenties Book 1: 'The Awakening of Claudia Faraday' (2019):A 1920s society lady and mother of three discovers the joy of sex for the first time. Book 2: 'The Purpose of Prudence de Vere' (2019): The extraordinary tale of Claudia's free-wheeling best friend. Entertaining Edwardians Book 1: 'The Makings of Violet Frogg' (2021). The multiple incarnations of a spirited woman looking for independence in the straitjacketed world of Edwardian England. Book 2: 'Mrs Morphett's Macaroons' (2021) A motley group of young - and not so young - people producing a play about suffragettes. Book 3: 'The Humbling of Meredith Martin' (2024) The rise, fall and rise of an ambitious Edwardian actress. OTHERWISE THEATRE: Part-time teacher and lecturer in theatre at Kingston University. WORKSHOP LEADER on self publishing at the Society of Genealogists and The Literary Consultancy PREVIOUSLY: ORGANISER of London theatre tours for overseas visitors. ADMINISTRATOR of The Literary Consultancy. CO-FOUNDER of The Children's Musical Theatre of London SCRIPTWRITER for TV, theatre, radio and documentary film SCRIPT EDITOR and reader for Hampstead Theatre, ACE and others ACTRESS: back in the Dark Ages, in the UK and Australia BA (Hons) in Humanities, Open University MA in Theatre Text & Performance, Birkbeck and RADA Mother of two, grandmother of one. Rag rugger, crocheter and Australiophile.
Patsy Trench's books
Genres: Commercial Fiction, Historical Fiction, Womens Fiction
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
It is the 1890s and Violet Frogg is on the run. From her stifling family home in a village outside London to married life in a swanky house in Bloomsbury and a husband who disapproves of her involvement with the suffragists. Then from a highly fulfilling position working for renowned actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the heart of London’s West End to the depths of the countryside and life downstairs as a housekeeper. Each new life involves a change of name and status. What is Violet running from? Or to? How many identities can a young woman embrace before she finds one that fits? Or is true happiness too much for a young woman to ask for in turn-of-the-century England?
Genres: Commercial Fiction, Romance, Womens Fiction
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
For everyone who ever loved too much, or too little, or unwisely. For all the lost, yearning souls who find love difficult or elusive or just too complicated for words. All We Need Is Love is a collection of short stories about love in adversity: love thwarted, love unreciprocated, love misinterpreted and love unexpected. Written from experience, with love and empathy.
Genres: General Nonfiction, History, Humour
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
WHY did men and women in Sydney once have to wear skirts to swim in? WHAT did famous writers such as Mark Twain and Anthony Trollope have to say about Australia? HOW did the miracle known as the Sydney Opera House ever see the light of day? AUSTRALIA AND HOW TO FIND IT is a mixture of odds and sods about that eccentric country, as seen through the eyes of a Londoner and Australophile
Genres: Commercial Fiction, Historical Fiction, Womens Fiction
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
Prudence de Vere has a reputation (which she has not discouraged), as a good-time girl. Born in the mid-Victorian age to careless parents, she has from childhood taken full advantage of a life without rules or purpose. As an adult she dallies with famous actors and cavorts with the likes of Millicent Fawcett of the suffragists and Lady Ottoline Morrell of the Bloomsbury set. She enjoys romances with princes, croupiers and stage hands, and dips her toe into the spiritualist world. She grasps life by the throat and shakes as much fun out of it as she can. However even Prue cannot escape the shocking realities of the Great War and the turmoil of its aftermath. Like everyone else, she experiences loss and heartbreak. But then along come the Roaring Twenties and the revitalising of a shattered society. In the end, what better purpose can a girl have than to...
Genres: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Womens Fiction
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
'It got better, in time, though if she were to be truthful it always felt more of a duty than a pleasure: a little like homework, satisfying when over, and done well, but never exactly enjoyable. But then nobody had ever suggested it could be otherwise.' This was the view of Claudia Faraday, respectable wife and mother of three, on the subject of sex. That is until an unexpected visit from a colleague of her absent husband's shakes her out of her torpor in a most surprising, not to say unlikely way, and spurs her to start keeping a diary that has remained hidden for nearly 100 years. The diary reveals a woman venturing into the outside world of the 1920s with a fresh mind and an updated attitude, prompted to re-evaluate the lives of her family and her friends and, ultimately, herself. As she does so she discovers, as...
Genres: Biography, History, Narrative Nonfiction
Age Groups: 18+
In the 19th century Australia went from a penal colony struggling to survive to a thriving, prosperous community with a glowing future. George Matcham Pitt's life spanned the best part of that century. A larger than life character with a booming voice and a fondness for quoting from classic poets, GM, as he was known, began as a humble farmer on the Hawkesbury and went on to become an auctioneer, landowner and founder of one of Australia's first and best-known stock and station agents, Pitt, Son & Badgery. Now his great great granddaughter, a Pom based in London, sets out to tell the story of this remarkable man and the extraordinary country he lived in: a place of squatters and swagmen, convicts and free settlers, battlers and chancers, explorers and entrepreneurs - the men and women who in an astonishingly short time transformed Australia from the worst country in the...
Genres: Biography, History, Narrative Nonfiction
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In 1787 a handful of people - convicts, marines and government servants - sail across the world to settle a new colony and call it New South Wales. In 1801 Mary Pitt, a widow with five children, migrates to New South Wales from her home in Dorset to live among these same convicts. Two hundred odd years later Mary's great great great great granddaughter travels to what is now Australia to discover why her ancestress risked the lives of her entire family to make her home in a penal colony. She uncovers tales of astonishing bravery and bloody-mindedness, the origins of a unique form of class distinction, why her own Australian/English mother was the person she was and how what was once regarded as the worst country in the world became one of the 'luckiest'.