Born in the village of Haydock, formerly in West Lancashire, Peter is the second eldest of four children born to working-class parents Leslie and Shirley Hill. After an eight-year hiatus, Peter began writing poetry again during the early part of 2021. Inspiration for poems is drawn from people, life, events and all things related to being human and the human condition. Peter’s poems ‘Walk Away’ and ‘Dissimilarities’ were published in the anthologies New Beginnings and Spectrum by Renard Press. He is also the author of a children’s book written in verse entitled Mickey the Scouse Seagull.
"Every Trick in the Book"
Peter Hill
Bars Fight
Bars Fight, a ballad telling the tale of an ambush by Native Americans on two families in 1746 in a Massachusetts meadow, is the oldest known work by an African-American author.
Passed on orally until it was recorded in Josiah Gilbert Holland’s History of Western Massachusetts in 1855, the ballad is a landmark in the history of literature that should be on every book lover’s shelves.
Fantomina
Fantomina, or, Love in a Maze is a novella by Eliza Haywood which charts an unnamed female protagonist’s pursuit of the charming, shallow Beauplaisir. Dealing with major themes such as identity, class and sexual desire, and first published in 1725, Fantomina subverts the popular ‘persecuted maiden’ narrative, and reaches a climax which would have shocked its contemporary readership.
Moving to London, a young woman – let’s call her Fantomina – meets a dashing man at the theatre. After a short, but intense, fling, Beauplaisir grows bored of Fantomina, and leaves her. Outraged that she should be so treated, Fantomina discards her disguise in favour of another, and sets off in hot pursuit of her victim, and a game of cat and mouse begins.
This edition features an introduction by Dr Sarah R. Creel, Bethany E. Qualls and Dr Anna K. Sagal of the International Eliza Haywood Society.
6170
The Zebra and Lord Jones
A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras.
The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 – or perhaps why she stole him.