Prison priest’s long sentences

To the prisoners at Shrewsbury Jail, the Rev John Waddington-Feather is “father”, or “boss”, or simply “John”. In between his role as a prison chaplain, and the chore of dialysis three times a week, five hours a time, he writes - and his latest book has just been published.

Mr Waddington-Feather, pictured, recalls how he reacted when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer five years ago.

“I thought ‘I’m going to make the most of life from now on.’ My pen has never stopped writing.”

Not that he is any sort of literary newcomer.

Since the 1960s he has written seven children’s books, three detective books, three romantic historical books, poetry, five plays, and several academic books.

Mr Waddington-Feather, who is 73, publishes under his own imprint, Feather Books. He decided to publish himself after trying unsuccessfully to interest Puffin Books in one of his children’s stories.

“I had a letter from them saying ‘I’m afraid we can’t publish this because your sentences are more than 10 words long and you are using too adult language.’”

As Mr Waddington-Feather is a retired schoolmaster, this response stuck in his craw.

Newest offering is “Ira and the Cycling Club Lion and Other Short Stories”, a collection of short stories for adults which, rather unusually, was published in Russian before being published in English.

His role as editor of The Poetry Church, a magazine of Christian poetry, proved to be the stepping stone into Eastern Europe. Dmytro Drozdovskyi, an academic in the Ukraine, saw the magazine and contributed poems to it.

Later he asked Mr Waddington-Feather to write some short stories for publication in a Ukrainian magazine, Porto Franko, which Dmytro translated.

These grew into a collection and it is these - in their original English, of course - which have now “come home” for publication here.

One or two have Ukrainian settings, but most are placed around Mr Waddington-Feather’s home town of Keighley in West Yorkshire, and there is also one, a ghost story, set in Shropshire.

They are described as “a well balanced mixture of drama, sadness, and typical Yorkshire humour.”

The Ira in the title appears in four of the stories and is based on Mr Waddington-Feather’s father, whose first name was Ira, although various other names and places in the stories have been fictionalised.

Mr Waddington-Feather came to Lyth Bank, near Shrewsbury, in 1969. He became a prison visitor at Shrewsbury Jail, but was later ordained and became an unpaid volunteer prison chaplain.

Incidentally he was born John Feather, but for various reasons, including, he admits, “sheer snobbery”, later became Waddington-Feather through the addition of his grandmother’s maiden name and a hyphen.

• Ira and the Cycling Club Lion and Other Short Stories is softback, 106 pages, and costs £5.99. It is available from Feather Books, PO Box 438, Shrewsbury SY3 0WN, or on (01743) 872177.
  The ISBN is 1 84175240 1.