Jon Tait
WRITER
THE BOOKS
Get all of the author's latest publications here.
First Plane Home
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Andy Armstrong is a Borderer from rural Northumberland. His dad is a postman with a pigeon ducket. When Andy is six in 1978 England haven’t qualified for the World Cup, so he supports Scotland instead.
First Plane Home is Andy’s story as he grows up over four World Cups following the Tartan Army.
It is a tale of finding identity, of friendships and the legacy of the Border Reivers, Georgie Best and, of course, football. The Thatcher years provide a backdrop to the story, with her presence looming large before she becomes Prime Minister in ‘78, during The Falklands War in ’82 and the aftermath of the Miner’s strike in ’86 with the rave scene and providing much of the action in 1990.
First Plane Home is a nostalgic look back at working class culture and the last of the blue collar manual workers while also examining the nature of the Anglo-Scottish Border and its people in Jon Tait's debut novel.
Northumberland
40 Coast and Country Walks
POCKET MOUNTAINS
History has left its mark on England’s rugged northern frontier and the prehistoric hillforts, ancient castles, fortified bastle houses, ruined abbeys and, of course, Emperor Hadrian’s great wall, all testify to a turbulent past. The forty short walks in this book visit many of Northumberland’s famed historical attractions including Holy Island, Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh – as well as many less well-known ones – on a tour which also takes in rolling moorland, craggy hillsides, verdant gorges, beautiful farmland and a coastline packed with pretty harbours, hidden coves, vast sandy beaches and windswept dunes.
96 pages
105mm x 148mm
Barearse Boy
SMOKESTACK BOOKS
Jon Tait’s family have lived in the hills of the Anglo-Scottish borders for at least six hundred years. He is a direct descendent of a notorious seventeenth century reiver family who lived in a peel tower called Barearse nearYetholm in Scotland, rustling cattle, burning farmsand putting their neighbours to the sword. In this
modern take on Scott’s Border Minstrelsy, Tait follows the reiver people as they are forced from their rural heartlands into the industrial and post-industrial
North East of England in search of work. If Kinmont Willie Armstrong were around today, he would recognise himself and his people in a book that celebrates the working class culture of the North. Written with the lawless spirit as well as the dourness and defiance of the original Border Ballads, Barearse Boy is as rooted in the purple heather moorlands of the borders as the writer himself.
Anvil - A record of Gretna FC in the Scottish Football League
Cherrytrees Press
Gretna Football Club certainly had their haters and detractors as they rocketed up through the Scottish Leagues with three back-to-back promotions and appearances in the SFA Cup Final and the preliminary round of the UEFA Cup in a story not a million miles away from Wimbledon’s rise – and subsequent fall - in England.
‘Anvil’ is a colourful collection of match reports and interviews that intends to stand as a record of events on the pitch during the club’s time in the Scottish professional game…and a final two-fingered salute to the boo boys.
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