Profile: Robert Anthony (Tony) Whelpton

About This Author

Tony Whelpton was born in Nottingham, on 27 January 1933. He went to High Pavement Grammar School, then, after National Service in the RAF, Goldsmiths’ College and Birkbeck College, London, obtained two degrees and a Postgraduate teaching qualification and the degree of Licence ès Lettres of the University of Lille. Then he taught French at Beckenham and Penge and Lowestoft Grammar Schools and in 1965 returned to Nottingham to take up a lectureship in French at what is now Nottingham Trent University; he left Nottingham in 1982. For 25+ years he was Chief Examiner in French at ‘O’ Level (later GCSE) and for ‘A’ Level Spoken French. He also wrote school text books, originally for Longman, in collaboration with Daphne Jenkins, many of which were best-sellers. He later wrote two books on cricket and a history of the Cheltenham Bach Choir, of which he had been Chairman and from which he only retired from singing in March 2013, when he was appointed Honorary Vice-President. When he was over 75 he resolved to try his hand at fiction: the result was his first novel, Before the Swallow Dares, published in 2012, to which he added a second in 2013, entitled The Heat of the Kitchen. After this came Billy's War (2014), its sequel There’s No Pride In Prejudice (2016), A Happy Christmas (2016) and A Change of Mind (2017). But this only scratches the surface. Here are a handful of other things he has done: with the Cheltenham Bach Choir he has sung at the Proms and at High Mass in Chartres Cathedral; he was a Mastermind contender in 2009, his special subject being the life of Balzac (he came second to Gary Grant who took the Mastermind title in 2012; in 1990 he went to Vienna to represent Great Britain in the European Final of the World French Spelling Competition (the ‘Championnats d’Orthographe’), and came second; in 1968 he was Producer and Presenter of the first schools broadcast ever on UK local radio, Écoutez, les Enfants!, a French programme for primary schools which ran for three years on BBC Radio Nottingham. Who knows what the future holds!

This Author's Books

Maurice Summerfield was an old man, a very old man indeed, who boasted that he ‘could remember his ninetieth birthday as if it had happened only yesterday’. He was also something of a celebrity, having been a popular broadcaster for many years, a lecturer....
ISBN: 9781786979650
Published: 30 August 2017
This short novel, or novella, is 83-year-old Tony Whelpton's second book this year, and his fifth since he switched from being a best-selling author of school and college textbooks in his late seventies, a change which he wishes he had made many years ago....
ISBN: 9781786972606
Published: 1 September 2016
This short novel, or novella, is 83-year-old Tony Whelpton's second book this year, and his fifth since he switched from being a best-selling author of school and college textbooks in his late seventies, a change which he wishes he had made many years ago....
ISBN: 9781786972989
Published: 9 September 2016
Before The Swallow Dares is a story about two old friends, Ted Bryant and Jim Fletcher, who bump into each other by accident after a gap of forty years, and decide to renew their friendship; one of them discovers that his friend is married to a girl he lo....
ISBN: 9781782996538
Published: 9 July 2013
The date was Thursday 8 May 1941. Billy Frecknall was nine years old, and the country was at war. What could that mean to a nine-year-old? A great deal, not least being the fact that Billy to all intents and purposes no longer had a Dad, because his fathe....
ISBN: 9781786105233
Published: 21 December 2015
The date was Thursday 8 May 1941. Billy Frecknall was nine years old, and the country was at war. What could that mean to a nine-year-old? A great deal, not least being the fact that Billy to all intents and purposes no longer had a Dad, because his fathe....
ISBN: 9781784079123
Published: 22 July 2014
‘Mummy, why don’t I have any grandmas or grandads?’ is surely a natural question for a little girl who hears her school friends talking constantly about outings with and presents received from loving grandparents. But when her innocent question is met by ....
ISBN: 9781788764469
Published: 25 July 2018
This is a newly-revised version of a book first published in paperback in 1998, which was very popular but went out of print some years ago when the original publishers ceased trading. It has recently been re-published as an e-book, and after it reached t....
ISBN: 9781782999034
Published: 9 September 2013
The Heat of the Kitchen is a fast-moving, exciting story: Saint-Pierre-sur-Loup is a little town in the south of France, a popular tourist destination, but with a notorious problem – perpetual traffic jams - and Alain Simondi is its Mayor. Cécile Delpech ....
ISBN: 9781782997917
Published: 7 August 2013
There's No Pride In Prejudice is a sequel to Billy's War, but you don't necessarily need to have read Billy's War first - though if you haven't, you will probably want to read it afterwards! Biily Frecknall is a university student when we first meet him i....
ISBN: 9781786971135
Published: 28 June 2016
There's No Pride In Prejudice is a sequel to Billy's War, but you don't necessarily need to have read Billy's War first - though if you haven't, you will probably want to read it afterwards! Biily Frecknall is a university student when we first meet him i....
ISBN: 9781786109989
Published: 26 May 2016