Coseley novelist releases second book set in Black Country

Robert Aston's first book, Jack O'Beans, was the story of young hero Jack's attempt to establish himself as a soldier.

His second book, Jack O'Knaves, sees Jack, now enrolled as a guard at Dudley Castle, eloping with the Steward of Dudley Priory's daughter and fighting off a hostile army.

Mr Aston has spent most of his life in the Black Country, although he was born in Oxford after his Black Country parents moved there for work.

When his mother died, when Mr Aston was just six years old, his father "waltzed off" to Australia, and Mr Aston grew up under the care of his grandmother in a poor area of Dudley.

He spent a successful, prizewinning career as a mechanical engineer, starting life as an apprentice in Dudley before being sponsored to spend ten weeks at Cambridge University.

Mr Aston said of his time at Cambridge that it "changed my life". He later became a researcher at Birmingham University and was there for over 20 years, working on, among other things, the intricacies of missile delivery systems.

Mr Aston's time at Birmingham gave him his first taste of serious writing, as he researched and wrote theses for a BA and then an MPhil.

Upon retirement, Mr Aston began a creative writing course in Dudley, which enabled him to pursue an interest in a more personal kind of writing.

"The book got started because of one of the class projects, which was to go and write about a building in Dudley. I picked the castle."

Mr Aston then began an expansive time-travel novel, before being interrupted by the idea for Jack O'Beans.

Jack is a somewhat autobiographical character, who is raised by his grandmother after his mother dies and his father heads off to war.

Mr Aston took further inspiration from a childhood obsession with Errol Flynn's portrayal of the outlaw hero Robin Hood.

But Mr Aston has done more than merely dramatise his childhood. He hopes to show people in the Black Country the rich heritage of the area preceding the industrial revolution.

"The Black Country museum is all about the industrial heritage of this area which is very important. But before that there was the medieval stuff that really led up to the industrial revolution because of the minerals that were already being dug up in the area. Limestone, ironstone, fireclay, anything you want.

"The main character of the books is the landscape, in a way. It all relates back to the hills and the valleys in the area."

Mr Aston has a keen interest in local history, and participated in Birmingham University's Vernon Manuscript project, in which Black Country residents read out extracts from a medieval manuscript from the area in an attempt to discover more about the origins of the local accent.

"I'm really interested in trying to publicise the medieval history of Dudley," said Mr Aston, who has been a keen participant in historical re-enactments at Dudley Castle.

Jack O'Knaves, and its prequel, Jack O'Beans, can be purchased from the Black Country Museum and other local history centres, or from Amazon: just search "Robert Aston Jack O'Knaves".