Ted Watts' Diary

Steve Matthews

$29.99

Paperback

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English

BIG SKY PUBLISHING
18 October 2023

History; Military history; First World War; Warfare & defence; Military life & institutions; Australian Fiction

Ted Watts’ Diary is a coming-of-age love story.

An orphaned seven-year-old English boy arrives in Sydney to be adopted by his ne’er-do-well Aunt during the early 1900s. The story finishes 60+ years later, after we have followed Ted’s tumultuous journey into manhood. Ted Watts’ Diary has everything a ripping Australian yarn should have, and more: larrikins, mateship, humour, heroes and villains, whores and brothels, retribution, tears and laughter, thieves, spies, war and tender love.

Ted’s difficult initiation into adulthood in Sydney leads him to Corowa, NSW where he meets and falls in love with Maddie ‘Dimples’. Before he settles down, Ted wants to follow his destiny – go to war and return to Corowa a hero. Like most young men, he has a problem expressing himself, so he promises Maddie he will write his life story in the pages of an old bible given to him previously by a dying old soldier from the Boer War. Under-age, Ted enlists and Dimples promises to wait for him – forever, if she has to. He undertakes to return with the bible, complete with his life story.

Much of the story unfolds through the eyes of Gertie, a German woman living in Bremen who finds an old bible among the WW1 paraphernalia belonging to her deceased stepfather, Ernst Bauer. This point of view allows us to witness the Great War from the German perspective as well as the Allies’.

By: Steve Matthews
Imprint: BIG SKY PUBLISHING
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 230mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781923004252
ISBN 10: 1923004255
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 18 October 2023
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Steve Matthews was born in the UK in 1953, migrating to Australia in 1985. At the age of 55 he sold his business interests to fulfill a lifetime’s ambition to write professionally. Since then, Steve’s acclaimed children’s books have been published in Australia, UK, Canada and the US, and his work in children’s literacy at home and abroad (in India and South Africa) has been acknowledged in the Australian State Parliament. The Skinny Girl (Highlight Publishing) was Steve’s first novel for adults, followed by the Historical Fiction trilogy (Big Sky Publishing), Hitler’s Brothel (2020), Hitler’s Assassins (2021) and Hitler’s Resurrection (2022). Hitler’s Brothel has been translated into Italian and Hungarian, and world audio rights to Hitler’s Brothel and Hitler’s Assassins have been acquired by Wavesound (Audible). Steve mainly writes about the strength of women during adversity and about social injustice. He works from a 100-year-old cottage in the grounds of the farm he shares with his wife Diane and two donkeys, outside Sydney.