The Fib, The Swap, The Trick and Other Stories

In The Fib, The Swap and​​ ​The Trick, George Layton's collections of short stories evoke a nostalgic, atmospheric view of growing up in the 1950s. Now published together for the first time as a bind-up.

The coach started to move off. I felt frightened. All these weeks, looking forward to it, and now I didn't want to go. Please, Mum, let me go home. She was running alongside, waving her hanky and crying . . . He'd nagged his mother for weeks to let him go on the school exchange, swapping his home in the backstreets of a northern town for a posh house in London. With a proper family. With a dad. But now it was all going wrong . . .

George Layton has combined a successful acting career with a successful writing career. He has played leading parts on stage in New York, Australia, and the West End, in productions as well-known and popular as Oliver! and Chicago, opposite other actors and actresses as acclaimed as Maureen Lipman and Lynda Bellingham. On television he has both appeared in and written several very successful comedy series, such as Don't Wait Up, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and Minder, and, perhaps most famously, he was the narrator of Pigeon Street. In July 2000 George received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Bradford in recognition of his work as an actor and writer.