Stuart Barlow

I am a former primary school teacher from Rochdale whose passion and speciality was promoting imagina-tive writing, with an emphasis placed firmly on the joy of the written word, for ten- and eleven-year-old children.

Horror in the Dells is the product of the stimulus I provided pupils with during my time in years five and six. To create the setting for this story, I would take my class into the adjacent dells and once there we would create a fantasy world of witches, goblins and other gruesome creatures which fired the children's imaginations and expanded their vocabulary, the end product of which was the creation of some wonderful writing, which they were invariably proud of.
My other novellas are based on stories I created to use as starting points in order to excite pupils' imagina-tions and stimulate an enthusiasm to not only write, but to enjoy the experience.
My other passion involves an interest in the evolution of recreation in the nineteenth century on which I wrote a thesis to successfully gain a PhD from Man-chester University.