PRLog - Aug. 6, 2015 - SOHO, U.K. -- Alan Wakeman, writer, playwright, gay rights activist, the man who changed the way the world learns English and who gave us vegan cookery before we knew what vegan meant, has finally told the story of his own personal journey over eight incredible decades.
Wakeman’s pioneering English Fast course was first published in the mid 1960’s becoming an educational tool that took the world of language teaching by storm. His techniques were ground-breaking and are still in use today. Without Wakeman’s English Fast innovations it is not clear that English would have become the universal language it is today.
Where many would have sat on their laurels having made their mark on the world, Wakeman turned his sights ever wider. Never one to let evil flourish through his own inaction, Wakeman has suffered both physically and mentally for not standing back and watching injustice unfold. He says he sees himself as “a reluctant revolutionary” and there are many people today who owe a great deal to Wakeman for overcoming that reluctance.
Specific facets of Wakeman’s own story are told in Fragments of Joy and Sorrow, a slim volume that charts his eight decades using his own contemporary notes, prose, poetry and artwork, looking back on each fragment with the wisdom of his long life. The stories are compelling and tell of a journey with all the ups and downs promised in the title. The book is also a love story, starkly charting the terrible loss of his friend and lover Pete Granger, killed in an accident when only in his thirties.
Fragments of Joy and Sorrow is a story of how one man made his mark on the world. It is compelling, laugh-out-loud funny, at times heart-breaking and ultimately uplifting.
Why tell the story now? “I have many already drafted fragments,” Wakeman tells me, “and my hope is that the publication of this first collection might inspire me to complete some of the others.”
Given the richness of Wakeman’s unpublished fragments which range from his 1950s national service through Parisian adventures to worldwide travel and back to his native Soho he is not alone in his hopes that further volumes will follow.
Further information
Fragments of joy and sorrow – Memoir of a reluctant revolutionary
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fragments-Joy-Sorrow-reluctant-revolutionary-ebook/dp/B0113D5VL0
Alan Wakeman
Website: http://www.awakeman.co.uk/
Dan Grubb, CEO, Fantastic Books Publishing
Email: fantasticbookspublishing@gmail.com
Tel: +44 74153 8888 2
Website: http://fantasticbooksstore.com
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Reluctant revolutionary who changed millions of lives tells his own incredible story
August 06, 2015 at 06:47 AM EDT
