Ian Cochrane (novelist)

"[This quote needs a citation] Later the family moved into one of the new council houses built after the Second World War, but Cochrane continued to attend the old two-roomed country school.

Russell (author of The Child and His Pencil, 1935), who encouraged young Cochrane to write and gave him the confidence to escape to better things.

[2] Cochrane moved to London in the late 1950s and after abandoning a variety of jobs was eventually able to live as a full-time writer.

Cochrane's first novel, A Streak of Madness, was published in 1973, and his second, Gone in the Head (1974), was a runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

[1][2] Much of his early life is echoed in his novels, but when asked if they were autobiographical, he said: "It's not science fiction, it's in the real world that I'm living in.

"[This quote needs a citation] Although he taught creative writing for a time and had been working on a book on the subject, he was doubtful whether ultimately it was something that could be learned.

On one occasion, in 1987, he was in an Oxford Street underground station late at night when he saw a group of eight to ten men beating up two others.

A new edition of F for Ferg was published in 2018 by Turnpike Books and a publication launch at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace involved a discussion of Cochrane's work with Maurice Leitch, Cochrane's friend and fellow novelist, Jan Carson, a contemporary novelist, and the academic Eamonn Hughes.

His portrayal of their clashes with parents, priests, bosses and officials reveal all the absurdity, selfishness and hypocrisy of their supposed betters.

This novel is about the escapades of a group of Portobello wasters who attempt to rob the poor-box in the local church while one of their number distracts the priest with elaborate fake confessions.