'The apprenticeship at Chatham Dockyard is the finest in the world - if you stick to it, the world's your oyster' Robert Smith's dad told his teenage son. When young Robert started there in 1958, the docks employed 6000 people on a two-mile long site encompassing hundreds of workshops, offices and storehouses as well as its own police station, fire service, medical centre, technical college and telephone exchange. There were three ship-refitting basins and eight main docks. Yet less than 30 years later Chatham Dockyard had effectively closed, with catastrophic consequences to the local...

Montreal in 15 Chapters is a compilation of stories taking place in Montreal, from the story of a translator in the Quebec government to the wanderings of a homeless person on the streets. Some of the spots mentioned now only exist in our memories, such as the Hawaiian Lounge, which was a bar for cross-dressers, or Parthenais Prison. Robert Markland Smith loves describing offbeat characters in off-the-wall unusual settings and situations. Sometimes the main character is a woman, as in Peace that Passeth all Understanding. Mr Smith has been writing since 1965 because he loves reading so much...