| Alan Wilkinson worked as a rat-catcher, freight train guard, cocoa-sifter, signalman and university lecturer, totting up forty jobs in thirty years before he was commissioned to write the history of a 150-year-old Yorkshire retail firm.
While he enjoys the solitary life of a writer, he likes to break out from time to time and re-engage with the real world. So, in between a spell on Emmerdale, writing scripts for 200 TV documentaries and making annual research trips to the American West, he continues his seasonal work as a bookie on northern race-courses.
His published books include three corporate histories, the most recent being Molasses to Acid (BP Chemicals, 1997); two collections of Great War correspondence, including Thank God I’m Not A Boy! (Univ of Hull Lampada Press, 1997); a celebration of Manchester United’s greatest defeats (Yesss!!!!, Injury-Time, 1998). Brim Full of Passion, the story of the first British-born Asian to play county cricket, was published by Breedon Books in May last year. Continuing Friendship, the official history of the 20,000-strong 41 Club, was launched in April 2005. Alan’s travel pieces have appeared widely, but most recently in the Wyoming-based American Cowboy magazine.
In 2004, Alan did a three-month spell as Jack Kerouac Writer in Residence in Orlando, Florida. In 2005 the Governor of Nebraska rewarded him for his writing about the state with an Honorary Admiralcy in the Nebraska Navy.
The account of his travels on the Great Plains, Toad’s Road-Kill Café, is currently circulating as he researches his next book – a study of veteran rodeo-riders called No Rocking Chair.
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