Books Written by Peter Inson
I began writing regularly while teaching in Switzerland. I was aware of boys I had
taught who were troubled by not knowing their fathers and out of this concern, “dunno” emerged to
be followed by two more novels before we returned to the UK. Before then, a chance meeting with a
former world downhill ski champion, Bruno Kernan, and a morning’s tuition from him resulted in a
piece that was published by “Swiss News.”
dunno
When I was teaching, I often encountered boys who did not know their fathers and sometimes this made
life very difficult for them. Jon is mightily troubled by growing up, and is in trouble with everyone.
Self-published in 2004, dunno resulted in an Arts Council award, gained excellent reviews and was
taken up by adults and teenagers. It is still selling, most recently to a young offenders’
institution. It gets boys reading.
Listen to extracts of dunno read by Fred Harris
Readers' Reviews
Read the first chapter
On the Side
Alex doesn’t know his father, doesn’t even know who he is until he tracks him down and makes a
surprising decision. Inspired by Boris Becker’s adventure in a broom cupboard.
Revised but not shown to anyone
Read the first chapter
The Redundant Car Park
By 2025 Essex has become a huge economic experiment as a government tries to kick-start a
failed economy. Soon the consequences effect far more than the economy and in Essex the
brakes have failed completely
Revised but not shown to anyone
Read the first two chapters
A Year in a Golden Cage
A memoir of five years teaching in Switzerland at one of the world’s most exclusive boarding schools.
It’s a counter to the sort of thing that Forbes magazine once ran, about marrying your son or
daughter into to a billionaire family.
Not shown to anyone
Read the first chapter
Our Way
A few years ago a friendly-fire incident in Iraq prompted the Pentagon to announce that its forces there would
be specially trained to recognise the Union Jack, the flag of their oldest ally. What horrified me was their
inability to recognise the flag of their oldest enemy; we British burnt down the White House in 1812.
The book is a satire on the special relationship between the UK and the US. It begins with four
teenagers crashing a car into an American Air Force base and ends with the kidnapping of the
American ambassador in London. Set in the Bush era, it suggests possibilities for the new regime.
With a number of agents at present.
Read the first chapter
An English Textbook, with a difference
Last year academics and employers expressed their great concern about poor standards of literacy
among teenagers and young adults. One university lecturer spoke of Ph.D students who could not
write from one end of a sentence to another. Without the ability to express ourselves in writing,
we are but semi-educated.
To remedy this I have drafted the first chapter of a text book that is based on twenty-five years
of teaching English and on twenty years of marking exam papers, O-level, A-level and now the
International Baccalaureate. It is based on the “dismantling” of the language to see how it works
and forms what one professor of education called a virtual classroom. It is lively and unconventional
and is aimed at students who feel let down by school, those who need to improve their written English,
and at parents who want to help.
This first chapter is with a number of publishers.
Read the first chapter
Current Project
The story of another teenager in trouble.
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