Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Books By John Healy - Author
John Healy was born in London in 1942. After a troubled childhood he became a boxer and according to his trainer, the great George Francis, 'Healy was a stylist with concussive power in both hands'. He was tipped for the top, unfortunately in the end it was drink that carried the knockout blow. Already an alcoholic by his late teens he was pressed into the army and after getting drunk and resisting the guard he was transferred to a penal battalion in a military prison. Discharged onto the
street, he spent fifteen violent years in a wino jungle.
During one of his prison sentences another prisoner Harry Collins (known as 'The Brighton Fox') taught Healy to play chess. Showing a remarkable aptitude for the game he stopped drinking and won ten major chess tournaments.
In 1986, living hand-to-mouth on a council estate at King's Cross, he wrote his 'savage masterpiece,' The Grass Arena which won the PEN Ackerley award (Europe's top award for literary memoir) and was described on Radio 4 by Matthew Sweet as 'one o
We use cookies to give you the best online experience. Please let us know if you agree to all of these cookies. To learn more view privacy and cookies policy.