New Books for August

We have several new books that have been selling very well in some outlets. Grant Holt:A Football Life is Jarrolds number one best seller across ALL categories, and Kaka Rokker Romany has been selling well in north Norfolk. Viking East Anglia is readable and well illustrated book, companion to the current Viking Treasures exhibition at Norwich Castle and great value at £14.99. Scholars, Saints and Sinners tells the entertaining stories of some of Norfolk’s more interesting vicars!

Photo: Nick White

Kaka, Rokker Romany

Tales from a North-Norfolk Romany Life

If, heaven forbid, you were to pick Mike Harmer up and give him a shake, the stories would come tumbling out and you would soon find yourself knee-deep in tales for Mike is a veritable goldmine of Norfolk lore – of characters and anecdotes, of fact, fiction and hearsay.

The son of a North Walsham horse trader and of proud Romany stock, Mike has lived his life by his wits: an honest man, yet a wheeler and a dealer, a ducker and a diver. Storytelling is in his blood and in Kaka, Rokker Romany: Tales from a North-Norfolk Romany life he has delivered a memoir of his dealings and his history with a cornucopia of characters: volatile relatives, ne’er-do-wells, swindlers, oddballs, bigamists, thieves and fools. He gives us a glimpse into a past which, though lively and full of character, was not always pleasant. There was many an injustice and life could be harsher than the nostalgia merchants would have you believe.

Largely self-taught and a voracious reader, Mike has a thirst for knowledge and is immersed in local folk and Romany history. His countless dealings have brought him into contact with all that society has to offer: from lords to loners and with each encounter he walks away with a bargain and a story safely stowed for future telling. Driving around the backroads of Norfolk with Mike you find that each byway, each dwelling has a story attached – where you or I might just see a barren field, Mike sees a landscape populated with human interaction.

His Romany heritage is at the core of his being. The outsider status it confers has given him both his canniness and his companionability. He is justifiably proud of it and keen to share his knowledge of the language, the old ways and the old tales. He writes in the tradition of George Baldry, Fred Rolfe and George Borrow – it is a folk tradition and he has given us a book worthy of his forebears – not one necessarily to be read from start to finish, but rather to be dipped into: the nuggets drawn out and savoured one by one. There are not so many like him left – he is a Norfolk legend and the authentic voice of an oral tradition.

Kaka, Rokker Romany: Tales from a North-Norfolk Romany Life
ISBN 9781838531331 RRP £9.95 (Trade discount 35%)

Grant Holt: A Real Football Life
ISBN 978-1-912692-36-1 Hardback 300pp RRP £20 (Trade discount 40%)

Scholars, Saints and Sinners: the stories of some of Norfolk’s more idiosyncratic clergy of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Author Chris Armstrong; ISBN 978-1-909796-63-8 RRP 9.95 (Trade discount 35%)