Right Up Your Street: The Express Columns, Volume One

by Ian Clayton

Ian Clayton promotes the idea that a sense of place is not just about bricks and mortar, rather it's in the people and the stories we tell each other. We are what we do, what we eat and wear, the places we go to enjoy ourselves, the way we share our history and what we have in common. Right Up Your Street brings together a selection of weekly columns Ian has written for his local paper, the Pontefract and Castleford Express. This fascinating compendium of real stories thrives on the term local; it is about round here in all its eccentric, bewildering and historical glory, putting pride right back into place and the local firmly amongst the global.

208 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Ian Clayton has been a jobbing writer, storyteller and broadcaster for over 30 years. He has written on subjects as varied as the environment, homelessness, jazz and rugby league. His stories are about making sense of where we come from. He has written three memoirs: Song For My Father about his lifelong search for a father figure; Bringing It All Back Home about his love of music; Our Billie about loss; It’s The Beer Talking, about adventures in public houses; In Search of Plainsong tells the full story of the original 1972 incarnation of the folk-rock group and their debut album In Search of Amelia Earhart. Right Up Your Street is the first volume of columns he’s written for Pontefract and Castleford Express. He is the co-compiler of Wisdom of Our Own, a book that tells the story of a learning centre that grew out of the Women Against Pit Closures movement. He is the co-author of Anne Scargill and Betty Cook’s memoir Anne & Betty, and he co-wrote Iain Matthews’s memoir Thro’ My Eyes

Ian still lives in the town where he was born, with his partner Heather, a social worker and artist.

source: Ian Clayton