REBEL ALLIANCE IS OUT NOW

Rebel Alliance is an anthology of short stories. Editor Anna Johnson says its aim is ‘to start a conversation. It is varied in style, voice and subject matter, it questions and satirises in equal measure. Above all, it is a good read and that is surely the best way to make any challenge to the doublespeak we must daily contend with.’

When Patricia Borlenghi, publisher of Patrician Press, approached me with a request to write a story that featured Donald Trump, I knew instinctively that I wanted to come at it slantwise. So I wrote a story about a character who was about as far removed from US politics as I could imagine: a drystone waller from Derbyshire chatting to his mates in the pub.

This sixty-something, who until recently has rarely ventured beyond the bounds of his local countryside, is disenfranchised: ‘I’m not a political man, me. Not got much time for politicians and the like. Never seems to make much difference, it’s usually a load of wittling then nowt changes.’ But then he receives a letter, an invitation to help build a giant wall across America, and a call to duty becomes a call to arms.

“The Wall” featured first in the anthology Tempest, and an updated version was published in Rebel Alliance.