Needleham

'In an ideal world you would stand at a crossroads, one big white sign pointing to SANITY, and the other to MADNESS, and in the broad light of day, with the sun on your back, you would make the only possible choice you could, and trot down the hill towards safety. Why make any other choice? The trouble is that when you personally get to that crossroads it's nearly always midnight, you haven't slept for a while, and some kids have been messing with the sign.' - from Needleham

Needleham by Terry Simpson is a multi-faceted novel, full of fascinating detail and emotional depth. The writing is lucid and imaginative throughout. I was captivated from the start with the powerful descriptions of setting, and the characters.

Well-meaning Luke steals the show in parts as a simple but complex character with a rich, inner life. I could feel for him as he is drawn deeper into the world inside Needleham and faces challenges he could never have envisioned when he took up his post as an advocate.

Simpson is not afraid to delve into dark and disturbing issues related to attitudes towards psychiatric inmates, both past and present. Historical ideas are cleverly woven into the text, illuminating current thinking and broadening the context. Reality and fantasy, sanity and insanity, are skillfully called into question. The story becomes both incredibly sad and laugh-out-loud funny by twists and turns. The use of humour, often subtle and sardonic, works well.

A sinister undertone adds to the atmospheric quality and increases as the story develops, leading to the immensely satisfying, though thought-provoking, denouement. Needleham is a story that will linger with me long after finishing reading it. - Jean Davidson

'Through the eyes of Luke, the new Patients' Advocate at Needleham, we are treated to a detailed filleting of the mental health system of the all too recent past, written with keen attention to the shabby, bleak aspects of the hospital itself, where 'coffee-coloured' drinks are swallowed down and 'carpeted areas of deserted arm chairs' abound. Along the way, Terry Simpson breathes new life into comedy staples. Dark, sharp and laugh out loud funny - I loved it.' - Mandy Sutter

'Kafka's The Castle meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in Terry Simpson's debut novel, Needleham. Based on the writer's experience as patient adviser in a Yorkshire psychiatric hospital not unlike 'Needleham', one hopes this comic nightmare belongs in the past. Hope again! Needleham builds its world in unsettling and convincing detail.' - Peter Spafford, Chapel FM

"At last! I've been waiting a long time for a book like this. A witty, astute and poignant satire on the mental health system. Highly recommended". Professor Helen Spandler, Editor of Asylum: the radical mental health magazine

Terry Simpson was born not long after a world war and grew up to a soundtrack of Family Favourites and Rock n' Roll. He has lived his whole life in West or South Yorkshire, apart from 4 years away at college studying Philosophy. He came back with a degree and an existential crisis that was resolved by a term of post graduate study on a psychiatric ward in Leeds. Appalled by the treatment of patients, including his own, he became a lifelong campaigner for mental health reform.He worked as a patients advocate in Leeds during the early 1990s, and went on to manage the newly formed UK Advocacy Network, a national survivor led campaigning group, from 1993-2002. During this time he wrote two plays about the mental health system, A Quiet Night On Roundhay Wing, and An Untimely Death On Passchendaele Ward, which were performed regionally and nationally in mental health settings, and came to the attention of the Open University, which filmed them for use as course materials. The second play was set in the mythical Needleham Mental Health Trust, and the novel Needleham is a sequel to this play.He has edited or co-edited various collections of poems and stories by mental health survivors, including And The World Really Had Changed (Leeds Survivors Press 1996), and Doorways in the Night - a collection of personal accounts of recovery (Local Voices 2004).Terry says I have 3 children and a partner who writes crime novels and keeps me on track. My ambition remains to change the world and, like my childhood hero, still have plenty of time to sing.