The Fall

Remember the fallen…

It’s 1998, and Michael O’Neill arrives in Singapore, on his latest mission.

His taxi driver recognises him as a famous actor, but long before that, he was a young soldier with the Manchester Regiment, stationed in Singapore. 

Manchester, 1938.

There’s no jobs to be had, and Reg Dwyer has children to clothe and feed, so he enlists in the army, certain he’ll never see action.

He’s sent to Singapore, where he must overcome the stifling heat and the constant longing he feels for his wife Marjorie and his three children by writing endless letters home.

The Manchester Regiment is a good bunch of lads, and they all get on, mostly.

There’s the Longhurst brothers, Richard and Eddie, who have nothing in common. They left an abusive stepfather and an uncaring mother in Manchester.

Eddie, the oldest, takes to army life, while Richard thinks of his training days in York, and how much he loved Minster. He always has his head in a book. And then there’s Reg, happy to get by and just wanting to go home. 

Then there’s Michael O’Neill, an Irish lad. Being a soldier is not for him, and the others think he is doolally. But when it comes time to fight, he takes orders better than any of them.

And then there’s Sergeant Percy B Shelley who works tirelessly to keep the men in line and ready to fight.

And then war breaks out and Manchester is bombed. And on a hazy February Day in 1942, everything changes for the Manchester Regiment, when Lieutenant Whitehead gives an order no soldier should have to follow.

Now, fifty years later, Michael O’Neill, in the biggest role of his life, returns to say goodbye to the men he knew as lads, who never got to see Manchester again. 

Beautifully written and tenderly told, The Fall is a novel of youth and growing up, of war and loss that will leave you with a special place in your heart for the Manchester Regiment.