People in a Place Apart, the latest book by Len Port. A new book about the Algarve, unlike any before it, is published and available exclusively from Amazon. It is called People in a Place Apart. The well known local author Len Port has been writing about the goings-on in the region for many years.

This new non-fiction title focuses on the people of southern Portugal from ancient times, right up to the present day.

Breaking Tracks is the debut novel by West Berkshire author Sally Hope Johnson and is set in the Algarve. In 2010, having just returned from one of her many holidays to the Algarve Sally felt inspired, and went on to write a fictional story of how a life can get derailed.

A friend told me about this book and i was intrigued, as Len Port is a very well known name in literary circles here.
I thoroughly enjoyed his previous books: "Get to Know the Algarve" and "Algarve on Wheels". How would this one be different? Well, boy is it different!

This latest work is filled with information gleaned from over 30 years of writing here - packed with colourful characters who have passed through the Algarve since the dawn of history: outrageous royals, illustrious admirals, romantic writers, dictators, sports stars, air aces, animal activists, fugitives, musical maestros, victims and villains.

 Although the Griffin Bookshop in Almancil has now closed, Linda is running (by popular demand) a Used Book Sale during the 3rd week of every month, from Monday to Friday between 10am and 5pm each day.

The sales take place at the furniture shop 'Lirio do Campo', which is located approximately 100 metres on the left of the Quarteira road from the Quatro Estradas roundabout.

Linda will be accepting used books for credit - although limited to one carrier bag of books at a time as space is limited! She looks forward to seeing many familiar faces.

Lisa Selvidge lives in the Monchique mountains where she writes and teaches creative writing. As well as teaching online courses for the University of East Anglia, Oxford and York, she runs monthly writing workshops at the Bica Boa Inn, Monchique.

There are two workshops, each an hour and a half long, one fiction (for those who like making things up) and the other is memoirs (for those who want to write their life stories).

 On the 25th March 1807, The British Parliament passed The Slave Trade Act, a bill that made slavery illegal throughout the British Empire. To the shame of all of us, slavery still goes on, continuing not only within the confines of the old Empire but in all parts of the world where money is king and humanity a less valuable, but eminently tradable commodity. Today it’s called Human Trafficking, but it's slavery, pure and simple.

 The Good Friday Agreement which heralded a new dawn for the people of Ulster is, for all practical purposes, functioning more or less as intended. Republicans and Loyalists are sitting side by side at Stormont and, apart from the odd family tiff, things are slowly changing for the better.

In London, although it had taken a massive load of the shoulders of the security services, many bulwarks of the establishment were less than happy with the numerous, apparently, random acts of appeasement performed by the Government: none less enamoured than the head of Britain’s Secret Services, Sir Rodney Parr. His distaste becomes more acute when he is summoned to a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary, who has orders directly from the Prime Minister.

In early 2004, Captain Ignatius Duffie and his motley crew of HMS Blackwater were approaching the end of the 200 years banishment to the nautical hereafter. The sentence handed down at their court-martial in 1806 for executing one of the worst blunders in the annals of the Royal Navy.

The sinking of herself and another Navy vessel in the same incident! Considering they were all ghosts anyway, all in all it hadn’t been a bad experience; especially the last fifty years, spent wiling away their time in a sleepy harbour on the east coast of England.