James Wharton - Author & Raconteur

James, from Ilfracombe, has entered his writing for the prestigious Booker Prize five times. He's recently written four novels in as many years, and six in all, which is an extraordinary achievement as he couldn't read or write until he was 42 years old! Fact or fiction, James just can’t help telling stories. A lively, entertaining, compulsive talker, his desire to share his take on the world, and the quirks of the people who live in it, have translated naturally into the novel form (scroll down to access Jim's books).

James explains how his dyslexia affects him: "I read back to front. I read a sentence, and when I get to the end, I read it again, then I can decipher it. It takes time but I am able to make sense of the story. 

Early on in his battle to overcome his dyslexia, James said his dream to write a book was an ‘inconceivable impossibility’. but he persevered. Such is his determination, that even after a stroke damaged his eyesight, he writes daily using a foun­tain pen, magnifying glass and strong light. "They said the stroke destroyed a quarter of my brain, but it's the bit I don't use!"

James has travelled the world, and bounced back from all manner of difficult, and sometimes dangerous situations, with good humour, including British atomic testing at the Monte Bello Islands, off the West coast of Australia. But sometimes with cynicism, in fact, he admits to having a chip on his shoulder, but perhaps with some justification.

The youngest of three siblings, he never knew his mother, was orphaned just after the beginning of the Second World War with his brother Sid and separated from his sister at the age of three.

He wrote his first book 27 years ago, five years after learning to read.  The subject of ‘Our Daily Bread’ revolves around the hell and damnation of the church run orphanage he was sent to in Yorkshire, where both he and his brother were regularly beaten. "This gave me the overwhelming desire, in later years, to write about the forgotten boys of Bead Home, a Waif and Strays Home". Though a fictionalised account, it is a harrowing insight into 40’s institutalisation.

2006 is the 60th Anniversary of the closure of the Waif and Strays Society Homes in England and Wales (1881 to 1946).

Anyone who's ever tried to get a book published will know it's standard form to be able to paper the walls of the entire house with rejection letters. But James' disappointment at failing to publish this book created a writer's block lasting 20 years. In the absence of an agent or pub­lisher, he undertook the painstaking labour of binding his books by hand photocopied print secured into second hand hardbacks he bought and stripped out for the purpose.

Optimism reigned over experience in this enterprise, he has eventually produced 30 copies of each novel, and independently submitted his work for The Booker Prize.

Although outraged that his submissions to the Booker are not acknowledged, all five of James novels are now obtainable at The British Library, and James is proud that the agent for the Copyright Library wrote to thank him personally for preserving our heritage.

Closer to home, you can borrow James' book, ‘The first of April’, from Ilfracombe Library. Written in a marathon two months and two days, it is set in Ifracombe and on Lundy, and was the unblocking of his lengthy writer's block, an "old fashioned love story."

Thin on description, but rich in dialogue, his most recent book, ‘The Battered Boys Club’, examines the plight of battered husbands. James challenges anyone not to laugh when reading it. His readiness to laugh is perhaps what has helped him survive the tough realities of being dyslexic at a time when the condition was not even recognised. "Years ago if you couldn't spell, you couldn't get a job."

Although he's yet to get the break he wants, James is still trying to find a publisher; and is utterly convinced of the merit of his work.

"I've never made a mistake in my life. I make a judgement, so it must be the right one, and I stick to it!".