Elliot Thorpe's Blog
September 29, 2022
Dean Martin's career as it unfolded...
Available now from memoryhive.co.uk/store, "The Dean Martin Association Journals" (ISSN 27536793) is a long-term project that endeavours to reproduce the entire 415-issue run of the DMA’s newsletters published between November 1960 and September 2011. The journals are published quarterly in high-quality A4 saddle-stitch format and edited by me, Elliot Thorpe, with consultant Ron Iveson.
In 2019, we had originally considered embarking on reprinting the 51-year run, instead settling on a ‘best of’ with "For The Good Times – The Dean Martin Compendium" (ISBN 9798758215487). Due to the unexpected success of that 2021 publication and the interest from readers both young and old in our continued work as ambassadors to Dino’s life and career, we have decided to go back to our roots and, with the team at memoryhive.co.uk, re-release the newsletters in omnibus editions.
From day one The Dean Martin Association was a news and information service, so that’s predominantly the format that you’ll see throughout. The style was chatty and relaxed. The journals offer both a fascinating glimpse into the development of a society dedicated to a Hollywood icon and a set of contemporary accounts of that icon’s career “as it happened”.
We must make it clear though that as the material featured in these volumes dates back across some seven decades, the master documents do vary in quality by way of content (including sensibilities and attitudes of the time) and printing (we acknowledge some of the reproductions within are difficult to read clearly but we have included them in any case to make this part-work comprehensive as an historical record). We have also had to remove personal/contact details of some organisations mentioned in and of some of the subscribers to the original newsletters, so you may notice passages of text blanked out or cropped from time to time.
Up until May 1968, the journals were called 'Letter From Dino'. They bore no title from then until September 1987, when the journals were named 'Just Dino'. While the first fully illustrated edition didn’t appear until that latter date (the early journals had a single photograph on the top left of the front page), we have taken the editorial decision to include images where appropriate and contemporary to the date of the bulletins and articles.
For those of you who were with us in our heyday, we hope this will be a journey of remembrance. For those just joining us, welcome our world…won’t you come on in…
In 2019, we had originally considered embarking on reprinting the 51-year run, instead settling on a ‘best of’ with "For The Good Times – The Dean Martin Compendium" (ISBN 9798758215487). Due to the unexpected success of that 2021 publication and the interest from readers both young and old in our continued work as ambassadors to Dino’s life and career, we have decided to go back to our roots and, with the team at memoryhive.co.uk, re-release the newsletters in omnibus editions.
From day one The Dean Martin Association was a news and information service, so that’s predominantly the format that you’ll see throughout. The style was chatty and relaxed. The journals offer both a fascinating glimpse into the development of a society dedicated to a Hollywood icon and a set of contemporary accounts of that icon’s career “as it happened”.
We must make it clear though that as the material featured in these volumes dates back across some seven decades, the master documents do vary in quality by way of content (including sensibilities and attitudes of the time) and printing (we acknowledge some of the reproductions within are difficult to read clearly but we have included them in any case to make this part-work comprehensive as an historical record). We have also had to remove personal/contact details of some organisations mentioned in and of some of the subscribers to the original newsletters, so you may notice passages of text blanked out or cropped from time to time.
Up until May 1968, the journals were called 'Letter From Dino'. They bore no title from then until September 1987, when the journals were named 'Just Dino'. While the first fully illustrated edition didn’t appear until that latter date (the early journals had a single photograph on the top left of the front page), we have taken the editorial decision to include images where appropriate and contemporary to the date of the bulletins and articles.
For those of you who were with us in our heyday, we hope this will be a journey of remembrance. For those just joining us, welcome our world…won’t you come on in…
January 24, 2022
World War When Is Here!
I was involved in a book project back in the distant past of 2016, an anthology of stories and verse to commemorate the (then-upcoming) centenary of the end of the First World War. While the project went in other directions, the work I had put into my contributions I didn’t want wasted. Any writer will tell you that an author never throws away an idea! I’d toyed with any number of scenarios and plotlines and saw mileage in expanding beyond the short story remit to a full-length novel.
I’d always found both World Wars to be fascinating, extremely dark chapters in recent history that have hopefully taught us lessons. I’d never written anything directly linking to modern warfare before, although I did delve into the skirmishes between the Ottoman Turks and the Wallachians in a horror novel in 2013. That previous novel, currently out of print, took a hugely fantastical liberty with the source material – something that seemed permissible bearing in mind that the protagonists and antagonists lived in a world wholly unlike our own some 500 years ago.
The idea then of taking a slice of history that is well-known, deeply researched, intimately documented and only a handful of years falling out of living memory I have to confess gave me moments of internal conflict. I didn’t want to make light of the events between 1914 and 1918. I didn’t want to flippantly create characters that existed as unflappable heroes. Nor did I want to step on the experiences those who served had been through. But that’s the art of storytelling, to weave a fiction that is believable, to conjure up heroes who aren’t two-dimensional, to place a tale in front of a backdrop that both thrills and chills.
I did my research. I would have been daft not to – because historians at all levels would find something that I got wrong in my prose. I created a past that was recognisable, a close as I could make it to reality following said research, with healthy influences thrown in for good measure: anything from Buchan to Elton to Faulks Fleming to Meredeth to Moffatt to Mukherjee to Sapper. I wanted a world of action, intrigue, drama and romance, of excitement, danger, love and loss. Then I went off-piste: the story mutated into how the Allies had lost the Great War and what happened after.
This alternative history, as I saw it, hadn’t been truly explored before in fiction. We have countless ‘what if Hitler had won’ tales, but no one had seemed to have asked what if the Kaiser had won in 1918?
And so World War When was born: a new, exciting reinvention of the end of 1914-1918 conflict.
But then I realised I had re-ignited my own conflicts: by telling a story of how the Central Powers had stormed across Europe to raise the Kaiser’s flag atop Buckingham Palace, I was erasing all the pain and suffering that our great grandparents had gone through. Perhaps I was looking too deeply into this. My solution? I made my characters, my protagonists, question the world they were living in. Could it be better? Could it be changed? Was the Great War fought for nought? Was all the pain and suffering they had gone through prior to 1918 a waste? When one of the characters answered ‘yes’, I knew I had my novel’s hook.
World War When poses the question: What if the Allies has lost the Great War?
Published by AG Books, World War When was released on 22 January 2022 in paperback, hardback and on Kindle. You can buy it from Amazon and all good bookstores.
For an exclusive extract, visit: https://worldwarwhen.co.uk/the-genesi...
I’d always found both World Wars to be fascinating, extremely dark chapters in recent history that have hopefully taught us lessons. I’d never written anything directly linking to modern warfare before, although I did delve into the skirmishes between the Ottoman Turks and the Wallachians in a horror novel in 2013. That previous novel, currently out of print, took a hugely fantastical liberty with the source material – something that seemed permissible bearing in mind that the protagonists and antagonists lived in a world wholly unlike our own some 500 years ago.
The idea then of taking a slice of history that is well-known, deeply researched, intimately documented and only a handful of years falling out of living memory I have to confess gave me moments of internal conflict. I didn’t want to make light of the events between 1914 and 1918. I didn’t want to flippantly create characters that existed as unflappable heroes. Nor did I want to step on the experiences those who served had been through. But that’s the art of storytelling, to weave a fiction that is believable, to conjure up heroes who aren’t two-dimensional, to place a tale in front of a backdrop that both thrills and chills.
I did my research. I would have been daft not to – because historians at all levels would find something that I got wrong in my prose. I created a past that was recognisable, a close as I could make it to reality following said research, with healthy influences thrown in for good measure: anything from Buchan to Elton to Faulks Fleming to Meredeth to Moffatt to Mukherjee to Sapper. I wanted a world of action, intrigue, drama and romance, of excitement, danger, love and loss. Then I went off-piste: the story mutated into how the Allies had lost the Great War and what happened after.
This alternative history, as I saw it, hadn’t been truly explored before in fiction. We have countless ‘what if Hitler had won’ tales, but no one had seemed to have asked what if the Kaiser had won in 1918?
And so World War When was born: a new, exciting reinvention of the end of 1914-1918 conflict.
But then I realised I had re-ignited my own conflicts: by telling a story of how the Central Powers had stormed across Europe to raise the Kaiser’s flag atop Buckingham Palace, I was erasing all the pain and suffering that our great grandparents had gone through. Perhaps I was looking too deeply into this. My solution? I made my characters, my protagonists, question the world they were living in. Could it be better? Could it be changed? Was the Great War fought for nought? Was all the pain and suffering they had gone through prior to 1918 a waste? When one of the characters answered ‘yes’, I knew I had my novel’s hook.
World War When poses the question: What if the Allies has lost the Great War?
Published by AG Books, World War When was released on 22 January 2022 in paperback, hardback and on Kindle. You can buy it from Amazon and all good bookstores.
For an exclusive extract, visit: https://worldwarwhen.co.uk/the-genesi...
September 28, 2021
New novel coming 1 December 2021!
As well as releasing a number of books about the entertainer DEAN MARTIN (the latest 'For The Good Times - The Dean Martin Compendium' due out mid-November 2021), I am very pleased to announce the upcoming publication of my new novel!
WORLD WAR WHEN
1918 – The Great War rages. Allied and Central Powers locked in a conflict unlike any the world has ever seen. And, in the midst of it, Daniel Restarick, soldier and operative for the mysterious Room 40, behind the barrel of a gun that could end the war, once and for all.
1928 – 10 years following the Allied loss, Daniel is as broken as the world in which he lives. The Kaiser’s Empire covers Europe and beyond, with dark forces gathering to wipe out the last remnants of resistance.
This isn’t the way it should have been.
It needs to be set right.
Available to buy in hardback, paperback and for Kindle 1st December 2021. Please visit the official website worldwarwhen.co.uk where you can also subscribe to the YouTube channel!
WORLD WAR WHEN
1918 – The Great War rages. Allied and Central Powers locked in a conflict unlike any the world has ever seen. And, in the midst of it, Daniel Restarick, soldier and operative for the mysterious Room 40, behind the barrel of a gun that could end the war, once and for all.
1928 – 10 years following the Allied loss, Daniel is as broken as the world in which he lives. The Kaiser’s Empire covers Europe and beyond, with dark forces gathering to wipe out the last remnants of resistance.
This isn’t the way it should have been.
It needs to be set right.
Available to buy in hardback, paperback and for Kindle 1st December 2021. Please visit the official website worldwarwhen.co.uk where you can also subscribe to the YouTube channel!
November 29, 2018
To Boldly Go...
Take a look at my post as the newest contributor to the Star Trek-based webpage: redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2018/11/28/new....
August 7, 2017
A new DEAN MARTIN biography
“I sang some songs, acted here and there, but no way would I call myself exceptional. I just hope I did my best for my audiences.” - a somewhat self-deprecating comment from Dean Martin on his own career. It was this laid-back approach to his work, however, that belied a dedicated and professional entertainer.
My father Bernard H Thorpe first got to know Dino in 1960 and what followed for the next thirty or so years was an unexpected working relationship between the two men. Bernard became instrumental in many of Dino’s album releases in the UK and a staunch promoter of the man’s career across the globe. This book is a respectful and unique look back at the career of a true, world-class entertainer and the story of how an unassuming family man from the British media industry became a life-long advocate and friend. My father sadly passed away in 2015 before his manuscript found a home but had given me his blessing to finish the work.
Featuring never-before-seen photos and letters of correspondence, as well as a comprehensive list of recordings and radio/film/television appearances, this is an insightful look into the life of a reluctant but legendary celebrity who scaled the heights of Hollywood and worldwide fame.
In Dino’s centenary year, chinbeardbooks.com is delighted to bring you Just Dino – A Personal Recollection of Dean Martin.
My father Bernard H Thorpe first got to know Dino in 1960 and what followed for the next thirty or so years was an unexpected working relationship between the two men. Bernard became instrumental in many of Dino’s album releases in the UK and a staunch promoter of the man’s career across the globe. This book is a respectful and unique look back at the career of a true, world-class entertainer and the story of how an unassuming family man from the British media industry became a life-long advocate and friend. My father sadly passed away in 2015 before his manuscript found a home but had given me his blessing to finish the work.
Featuring never-before-seen photos and letters of correspondence, as well as a comprehensive list of recordings and radio/film/television appearances, this is an insightful look into the life of a reluctant but legendary celebrity who scaled the heights of Hollywood and worldwide fame.
In Dino’s centenary year, chinbeardbooks.com is delighted to bring you Just Dino – A Personal Recollection of Dean Martin.
September 25, 2014
Seasons of War - An Unofficial Doctor Who Anthology
Don't be fooled by the word 'unofficial' in the title.
I'm immensely proud to be involved in this work, the proceeds of which are going to Cauldwell Childrens Charity.
Here's the link to the charity and another for more information:
https://www.justgiving.com/Declan-May1/
https://www.facebook.com/SeasonsOfWar...
If you donate now, leaving your email address either in the donation box or donate and, citing the JustGiving donation number, you'll get a copy of the e-book (sent to you via a link) a week before the official release on 9 December. For the paperback & Deluxe editions, you can either buy it through a Print On Demand and a portion of the price goes to the Charity (the remainder going to covering printing etc) or via another service (TBA) where you buy the book and have the option to click to donate. In the case of both the paperback and the Deluxe editions, there is a set price therefore ensuring that money goes to the charity. The price is yet to be set.
These people have all written for the book:
Jenny Colgan
Paul Magrs
George Mann
David McIntee
Jim Mortimore
Kate Orman
Lance Parkin
Matthew Sylvester
John Peel
Gary Russell
Andrew Smith
Matthew Sweet
Declan May
David Carrington
Simon A Brett
Warren Frey
Christine Grit
Lee Rawlings
Jon Arnold
Sami Kelsh
J R Southall
Amy CandelPaul Driscoll
Daniel Wealands
Matt Barber
Eva Burrows
John Davies
Matthew Kresal
Dan Barratt
Maxine Fortier
Christopher Bryant
Elliot Thorpe
Alan P Jack
Elodie Bonnet
Barnaby Eaton-Jones
I'm immensely proud to be involved in this work, the proceeds of which are going to Cauldwell Childrens Charity.
Here's the link to the charity and another for more information:
https://www.justgiving.com/Declan-May1/
https://www.facebook.com/SeasonsOfWar...
If you donate now, leaving your email address either in the donation box or donate and, citing the JustGiving donation number, you'll get a copy of the e-book (sent to you via a link) a week before the official release on 9 December. For the paperback & Deluxe editions, you can either buy it through a Print On Demand and a portion of the price goes to the Charity (the remainder going to covering printing etc) or via another service (TBA) where you buy the book and have the option to click to donate. In the case of both the paperback and the Deluxe editions, there is a set price therefore ensuring that money goes to the charity. The price is yet to be set.
These people have all written for the book:
Jenny Colgan
Paul Magrs
George Mann
David McIntee
Jim Mortimore
Kate Orman
Lance Parkin
Matthew Sylvester
John Peel
Gary Russell
Andrew Smith
Matthew Sweet
Declan May
David Carrington
Simon A Brett
Warren Frey
Christine Grit
Lee Rawlings
Jon Arnold
Sami Kelsh
J R Southall
Amy CandelPaul Driscoll
Daniel Wealands
Matt Barber
Eva Burrows
John Davies
Matthew Kresal
Dan Barratt
Maxine Fortier
Christopher Bryant
Elliot Thorpe
Alan P Jack
Elodie Bonnet
Barnaby Eaton-Jones
Elliot Thorpe's Blog
- Elliot Thorpe's profile
- 6 followers
Elliot Thorpe isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
