Why I made this site ...

I’m Mike Lloyd-Jones and I’ve been a fan of Guy Bellamy’s ever since I read his first novel, The Secret Lemonade Drinker. I still remember buying the book in London and starting to read it on the train home. The book got off to a good start for me and within the first page or two I could see that it was going to be a ‘good read’, but just a few pages further on into the book and I realised that this was the work of a major new literary talent.

It wasn’t the jokes that brought that home to me - though they were splendidly funny . It wasn’t the characterisation - though from the first it was obvious that this was a writer who could create living, breathing, three-dimensional personalities. What convinced me of Guy Bellamy’s greatness was his ability to create an atmosphere, a sense of place.

The scene which showed me this was, as I say, within the first few pages of the book. The central character, Bobby, goes into his local - a pub properly called the ‘Coach and Horses’ but known to all its familiars as ‘The Planet’. It’s Christmas time and Guy Bellamy brings the bar to life in a way that made me feel I was there in the pub - smelling the beer and cigarette smoke, feeling the press of the other customers.

The ability to create a setting that is evocative and realistic takes considerable talent and it was Guy Bellamy’s vivid handling of that scene that showed me what a major new writer he was.

Reviews of his books frequently mention that Guy Bellamy has a great talent for writing brilliantly funny dialogue. It’s true, but actually there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye. Lots of writers can produce witty dialogue - but it sounds artificial. You can almost hear the sound of the word-processor clattering away to manufacture the jokes. Guy Bellamy has the talent to write wonderfully funny dialogue that always sounds realistic - like real people talking. This is comic writing at its best.

I’ve read each of his other novels as they appeared and each one has been superbly entertaining . His consistency is another measure of his talent. No other comic writer in the last thirty years has managed to sustain writing at such a high level. There have been no ‘misses’, no disappointments - each of his books has been brilliantly funny and superbly well-plotted with living, breathing true-to-life characters.

I’ve created this website to celebrate his work with other Bellamy fans and, hopefully, to introduce new readers to his comic masterpieces.