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1942-
Novelist and poet, born in Scotland but has lived most of his life in the West Midlands. He has provided the following biography especially for this website
I was born in 1942 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and came to live in Wolverhampton in 1946 after my father was demobbed from the army. I was educated at St. Luke's Primary School, where I learned to read and write, and Wolverhampton Grammar School, where I learned little of real value. After three highly enjoyable years roistering and philosophising at Durham University, I was awarded a third class degree in Classics. This, together with holiday jobs as a hot dog salesman, as a bus conductor, and as a pea picker, qualified me to teach English in secondary schools, which I did with moderate success and considerable satisfaction for the next twenty years. Having finally achieved a M.Ed. qualification in English teaching, I then in 1984 became English Adviser for Dudley LEA, which allowed me to promulgate my anarchic views on education to my heart's content. In 1993 I became an independent Educational Consultant, not knowing what this was or what it might entail. In my case it mainly entailed leading Ofsted inspections and teaching at the University of Birmingham, though I have also advised government, governors, and the governed in a variety of ways.
I have always been a writer. My first creative piece, I believe, was a newspaper written in Latin. My poetry collection, Warchild (1975), received faint praise and then was quietly forgotten. Three subsequent novels never saw the light of day, despite spending many agonised hours in the slush piles of well-known publishers. My first crime novel, The Llareggub experience, was written in 1996 but I decided to launch my Tallyforth mystery series with the second title, Be a falling leaf in 1998. The second title to be published was Bird on the wing in 2000. The third in the series is entitled The Liquidator and is based in Wolverhampton [published in early 2002].
I am also currently putting the finishing touches to my first travel book, which resulted from a fifty-mile walk around the canals of the Black Country earlier this year. This is called Grey peas and bacon and will be an irreverent and amusing perspective on the people and places who have made the area I have lived in almost all my life what it is today. I am also engaged in writing a play about a Polish Catholic girl imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1944, whose scribblings on the wall of her cell inspired Gorecki's Third symphony.
©Bob Bibby
Bob Bibby makes effective use of West Midlands settings for his work. Be a falling leaf is set mainly in Tamworth, Staffordshire, and is concerned with a mysterious death during an inspection visit to a local school. Tamworth's history is woven into the story and both Sir Robert Peel and King Offa are featured. The Liquidator (2002) is set in Wolverhampton and begins at a local football match between Wolves and West Bromwich. Tallyforth recognises a criminal being ejected from the ground and it is the body of the same man that is found outside the Wolves ground some hours later.
The first chapter of each of Bob Bibby's Tallyforth Mysteries may be read online here, Be a falling leaf (1998), Bird on the wing (2000) and The liquidator (2002).
Page created 2 September 2001 and last updated 28 October 2002
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