Len Webster
Len Webster was brought up in Smethwick, where both sides of the family lived and where he claimed the distinction of becoming the first person ever to be attacked by a monkey in a Smethwick street. He attended Holly Lodge Grammar School for Boys but left at the age of sixteen and worked locally as a journalist for several years before studying for degrees from the University of Warwick and the University of Leicester, and subsequently from the University of Birmingham. He has travelled widely, spending extended periods in the USA and in Asia, especially South-East Asia (where he continued to hold a deep grudge against monkeys).
His books include The Turban-Wallah: a tale of Little India (Oxford University Press), Beneath The Blue Moon and ‘Hell-Riders’ & Other Stories (Times, Singapore). ‘Secrets’, an award-winning Asiaweek Short Story Competition entry, was published in the anthology Prizewinning Asian Fiction (Times, Singapore, and Hong Kong University Press). A member of the Black Country Society and a contributor to its quarterly publication The Blackcountryman, he has also worked as a teacher and lecturer, and edited textbooks, in-house magazines and newsletters.
Born in Dudley in 1955. A chequered career has seen Stokes ride shotgun for Dudley Co-op, work bars on Dudley Zoo, train as a clinical chemist in Birmingham and ultimately develop and run a specialist unit in Abu Dhabi, which investigated infertility. His return to the UK in 1985 held tragedy round the corner as his father was murdered in the aftermath of the bombing of Libya by the US. Stokes would go on to describe this in “A Witness For Peace” (1994) In 1988 Stokes retrained as a social worker on Wearside and worked through the grades to manage a busy children’s centre in Sandwell before switching to community social work in Walsall in 1994 where he handled complex child protection cases. Stokes began writing while in Leicester in the early 1980s, and has written several novels, over 200 short stories, and a travelogue as well as “A Witness For Peace”. With Barry Morris he developed a training program for workers helping families bereaved through murder.
He has appeared on BBC Two’s Split Screen discussing media intrusion, in a BBC One documentary about the life of Lenny Henry, in a clip for the BBC Four quiz show Never Mind The Full Stops, the BBC Two programme The Comedy Map of Britain and in Lenny’s Britain (BBC One). He has made numerous appearances on Carl Chinn’s radio show. Other radio credits include Saul Abner’s show on WCR and Jimmy Franks on WM. He was also involved in the BBC Voices project, representing the Black Country with Billy Spakemon, Brendan Hawthorne, and Gary O’Dea. In 2005 Stokes began live performances of his fiction at the Alternative Black Country Night Out put on by the Creative Co-operative of which he was a founder member along with Billy Spakemon and Gary O’Dea. A second co-op, RoosterKateSpake, was formed when Stokes and Billy Spakemon were joined by Laurence Hipkiss to promote spoken word performance in Dudley. This ran until January 2007 when Stokes left to produce the Alternative Black Country Revue with Lydon Evetts (April/May 2007) and to pave the way for the Kates Hill Press to produce Live Literature events in its own right.
Stokes returned to lab work 2003 and worked at City Hospital and then Birmingham Children’s Hospital. He lives in Dudley with his partner Anne. Black Country Stories and Sketches (1992), “A Witness For Peace” (1994), Tried by Prejudice (1999), The Gulf (2004), A Pack of Saftness (2004), Second City Stories (2006), Brierley Hills Cop(2008) American Toilet Tissue & Schroedinger’s Pussy (2011) and Last Virion Standing (2106) have been published by the Kates Hill Press. An Audio Book The Grant featuring two of his short stories was produced in association with Roosters Studio in 2005. A second audio book Doctor, which included performances by Louise Stokes and Brendan Hawthorne, was produced in association with Poetry Wednesbury in 2007. These were replaced by recordings with Black Country Theatre with whom a third CD, Snowman II was recorded in 2017. Stokes retired in 2013 following a second round of treatment for Hepatitis C. His most recent work is Last Virion Standing – A journey to, through and beyond hepatitis C which celebrates living a full life with the disease and surviving the trials of treatment. He is currently working on In Search of Tadoyashisan which chronicles his long trip on the Trans Siberian Railway and on through Mongolia and China to Japan where he sought out Tadoyashi Suzuki for whom he did an English class in Tokyo in 1983.
