Tod Benjamin left Palmer’s School in 1953. National Service in the RAF was followed by fifteen years in retail management. A change in career led to twenty-five years in the chemical industry and world-wide travel.From the age of fifty-nine, Tod played winter golf in Florida and began to write. A damaged back meant the end of golf and more concentration upon his writing. His first success came with the publication of a memoir, followed by his first novel at the age of eighty. Then, he set about creating The Stoker Trilogy. The first book, ‘Charles and Charlie’ was published by Austin Macauley in 2020. ‘The Tally Man’ is the second of the series and Tod is currently writing the final instalment, ‘The Soldier’.
Six feet two inches, blond-haired and blue-eyed – Charlie Stoker is the handsome, highly principled son of a dead father whom he revered and a deeply religious Catholic mother. In the dark economic atmosphere of 1931, Stephen Collick, his late father’s friend and his mother’s benefactor, offers twenty-year-old Charlie the opportunity to build a commercial career in London’s East End. Charlie, already committed by his inbred sense of duty to life in a loveless marriage, soon becomes popular and successful. His remarkable ability to win friends without ever becoming too personally involved enables him to establish a wide circle of admiring customers and colleagues. Charlie is always prepared to help solve their problems.As a lifestyle, this works. That is, until he meets Sally Cutter in 1936. For the first time in his life, Charlie discovers true love. The world continues to become a darker place and the growing menace of Hitler’s Nazi Party in Europe is echoed by Moseley’s anti-Semitic Fascists marching through Cable Street. Charlie watches helplessly as Sally’s life spins out of control.With the threat of war ever nearer, the upright Charlie carefully devises a scheme to secure Sally’s future. But he is surprised when Sally resets the scheme on her own terms.
Charles Stoker, in 1910, is a brilliant young engineer and inventor with a wonderful career before him. Given a unique opportunity by the powerful Collick family to test his inventions and serve his country, he enlists in the Royal Flying Corps. In 1918, Major Stoker returns home to his wife and child, bones and dreams shattered by his experience and refusing any contact with his former life and colleagues.
Only after he is shockingly killed, eight years later, does the distraught Milly Stoker begin to discover the truth about her husband’s war.
In 1928, still numbed by the loss of his father, their innocent son Charlie goes to college, where he is easily led into a student’s life and a student’s sins. When suddenly faced with an agonising crisis, however, like his father he tackles the problem head on… with devastating consequences.
Charles and Charlie is Book One of the Stoker Trilogy.
The Tallyman, Book Two of the set, will be released in 2021.
It is January 1940. Tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome, Charlie Stoker is loved by everyone. Seen by all as the man who has it all, he is tortured by the belief that he lives a lie, a double life. His religious upbringing and inborn sense of righteousness demand that he resolve his problem, but WWII intervenes. Charlie, Bobby, Harry Bateson, Billy Walters, and even mild Percy Spence vanish to serve their country.
While Charlie completes his army training, Sally Spence gives birth to a beautiful daughter, Shirley, and Charlie becomes godfather to his own child. Then, the ‘phoney’ war explodes. The drama of Dunkirk is followed by the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. London is in chaos. The lives of all those associated with the Stokers are endangered by the constant threat of the never-ending air raids. With all the men absent, their families spend their nights in Anderson shelters or hiding behind black-out curtains. Somehow, stirred by Winston Churchill’s passionate speeches, they keep up their spirits and find a way for most to survive.
Charlie becomes a commando officer, who endures some of the fiercest battles of the war in Europe. He is saved from near death by the French Resistance; then, later, he leads his men through the entire Italian Campaign. His experiences there teach him to see his problems in a different light. Is there, at last, a path to acceptance?
Six feet two inches, blond-haired and blue-eyed – Charlie Stoker is the handsome, highly principled son of a dead father whom he revered and a deeply religious Catholic mother. In the dark economic at ........
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