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By: Larry Signy

The Songsters

Pages: 262 Ratings: 5.0
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Showbiz.

A word that simply sums up glamour – with a large-sized capital G.

Here is all that glitz in the story of two songwriters – a musician and a lyricist – who meet, start to work together, have a small success, then get ‘conned’ into writing a big musical show.

The two are composers – one a young, serious Australian dedicated to writing music ‘in the old-fashioned way’, and the other an English lyricist with an apparently couldn’t-care-less attitude but nevertheless in love with writing words to music.

Set vaguely just after the Swinging Sixties, they live in a world where amusement and entertainment are centred around live stage shows, big screen films or early days television. It is a world before social media takes control – where people talk to each other rather than into a piece of electronic equipment and listen to music on vinyl discs or the more modern tapes or discs.

It is a world of mysterious allure and dreams, and the two songsters fit into it perfectly.

They slot into the alluring fascination of preparing a London West End musical, and the readers can follow their exciting, enchanting journey as they make their initial recording and then help develop, rehearse and stage the show.

The author has been a journalist all his life – local newspapers, freelancing with British national papers, then working in film and TV publicity before returning to provincial newspapers as a military correspondent.


Forced to retire against his will twenty-one years ago, he continued with freelance and charity PR work.


Now 90, for the last eight years he has been the sole carer for a wife with Alzheimer’s, but now she has moved into a care home for full-time medical care and he has resumed writing. Although he had published stories before, The Songsters is his first published novel.


Customer Reviews
5.0
2 reviews
2 reviews
  • From Charlie Miller, former journalist and now senior consultant at Tantalus Group, USA.

    Heart-warming human stories appear few and far between in the face of the devastation wrought by Covid. But if you believe that we should follow our dreams, that age is purely in the mind, then read on! Mark Twain’s famous quote: “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” applies to no-one more than my old friend Larry Signy. This week, at the tender age of 90 (and a half, as he insists), the lifelong journalist and publicist will see his first novel published. He simply loves to write - be it news stories, features or short stories. But he always harboured a dream of publishing a long-form novel. This week his dream, in the shape of The Songsters, becomes reality. Congratulations and thank you, Larry, for showing us what’s possible in life.

  • From Ruth Davies, retired doctor Surrey

    Just finished The Book, which goes out in a blaze of glory & hope. I did quite a lot of acting at Oxford, so I saw a bit of backstage stuff, and my heartfelt passion for many years has been for live opera, so I did enjoy reading The Songsters. Really. Got hooked on the story, liked the characters and wanted them to succeed.

    Love, Ruth

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