Michael
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
‘Tea fag, with toasted crumpets,’ bawled Michael, as he loafed in the Prefect’s room.
Young Worthing scurried around the room looking for the ingredients.
‘There’s no tea in the caddy’ he muttered.
Michael’s shoe redirected
‘Look you little pip-squeak, you lordly lump of shortsighted humanity. Look. Up on the
shelf, in a tin labelled tea.’
‘But that belongs to……Agh!’
Again Michael’s shoe found
‘Use it,’ yelled Michael, ‘before I become annoyed. And when you’ve managed that
minor task, blanco my cricket shoes and pads: I need them for this evening’s practice.’
‘But I’ve got prep to do; an essay and a translation,’ wailed
‘You fag for me and I come first. Don’t you ever forget that
you hear me. All your life you will be nothing. Every time I speak you jump.’
Michael’s last year at Bristol House was a curious mixture of success and nearly fatal
disaster. Inherently Michael was an extremely intelligent young man and did well
scholastically without any particular effort. As a result he did well in his final exams and
was set to go to
down to aunt Veronica’s at
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Michael Lord is the second son in a wealthy family where the father believes in primogeniture. Set in 1990 on the Lord family estate in Somerset where the family manages their forests and Brainware, their software development company, the story describes Michael's strategies at age twenty to become the inheritor of the Lord family fortune by his twenty-first birthday.
In a family brought up to ride, to sail and to rock climb Michael manages to demonstrate how he is a survivor and an opportunist where his future is concerned. Michael manages to merge studies, business opportunities, women, drugs, sex, plagiarism and family affairs in a variety of ways to advance his own future. Around this character of Michael, an intelligent but self-centred young man, the story describes the concerns and efforts of Anthony and Sylvia Lord, Michael's parents to understand their son as well as their three other children. The challenge of the second child in the Lord dynasty has been repeated in each previous generation.
Just after Michael's twenty-first birthday, when he partially achieves his annual objective the story concludes with Michael being pressured to find a supposed lost or hidden part of the Lord family inheritance. In his efforts to find this at all costs Michael ends up paying a high price.
About the Author
John Osborn was born in 1939 in Ipswich England but grew up in the East End of London where he learnt to sail. In North Wales he graduated as a professional forester and rock climbed three days a week. After working as a field forester for three years in Australia John went to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC for postgraduate studies and the Flower Power movement of the sixties. While working for thirty years for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, both as a forester and as a systems analyst and authoring several technical papers John sailed competitively, climbed mountains and taught survival and winter camping. He finished his professional career with three years consulting in Zimbabwe, walking with the lions. Now retired, although working part-time at the local Golf Club, John lives with his wife in Kelowna BC where he hikes and x-c skis from his doorstep.