Samuel Peter Shaw’s drama of love and betrayal is peopled by the Sink Set, a group of fickle, moneyed sophisticates living in London's leafy southern suburbs. For all but one of them, the Iraq War is sobering but coincidental, a backdrop against which they shrug and carry on. Colly Wolfson, a member of the Set, is a forty-something prize-winning architect and builder; wealthy, debonair, popular. But personal tragedy strikes him twice.
Overcome by grief and guilt, he tries to make amends, but keeps his efforts secret. For a time, he believes he might achieve a new beginning. But in 2003 – on the anniversary of his own tragedies – he is horrified by the numbing, hi-tech bombing of Baghdad. It leaves him isolated among his uncaring friends – and it unhinges him.
Increasingly unhappy and with his marriage crumbling, he drifts into two affairs – and the downward spiral begins.
“While They Were Dying” is the story of a man falling apart – and of the efforts of his family and friends to save him; a story of love and devotion, betrayal and deception.
And all the while, among the laughter and the tears, is Colly's ever-present obsession with the monster in the corner – the Iraq War of Bush and Blair.
Samuel Peter Shaw was educated at Rotherham Grammar School, England, and was a working journalist for nearly forty years on a variety of newspapers, news agencies and broadcasting setups in Britain and Africa - a career that took in the pit villages of South Yorkshire, the struggles for independence in what are now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and the marble halls of the BBC World Service in London. During his 29 years there, he enjoyed spells as a defence and diplomatic correspondent and reported at the UN and NATO. But his main BBC work was as a desk editor in charge of bulletin and programme teams, rising to Assistant Editor and recalling three "chaotic" weeks when he found himself in charge of the News Department during a staffing crisis. He retired early to write fiction and "While They Were Dying" is the first of his three novels to be published. He and his wife now live in picture postcard Suffolk, where he struggles with an overgrown but beautiful garden and offers burnt barbecues to his three sons, their wives and his six grandaughters. He is an enthusiastic but incompetent sportsmen, a cricket club vice-president, a golf club veteran, an active supporter of village activities and, for good measure, the founder of a society to promote music concerts in his parish church.
