Books by Jonathan Smith

Guide to the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge, the area and other walks beyond the 3 Peaks.

Jonathan Smith, author of many successful novels, but also a playwright and educationalist, wrote two radio plays dramatising Betjeman''s life which were first broadcast on the BBC in 2017 and which have now been combined into a single narrative, part biography, part fiction but providing an extraordinary - and above all, highly entertaining - journey into the mind and the life of John Betjeman.

College-university relationships, the role of examinations, the politics of curriculum: papers amplify the picture of developments in Cambridge during the century.

A story of great human triumph in the life of a much loved public figure - a TV tie-in edition published alongside the major ITV drama starring Michael Gambon, Lindsay Duncan and Rachel Stirling.

A story of great human triumph in the life of a much loved public figure, KBO: The Churchill Secret is the perfect novel for fans of The King's Speech.

The Following Game is about passion and obsession. It's about cricket, family and poetry, but most of all it's about a father following his son's career in the public eye and the close relationship they share.

Sir Alfred Munnings, retiring President of the Royal Academy, chooses the 1949 Annual Banquet to launch a savage attack on Modern Art. The effect of his diatribe is doubly shocking, leaving not only his distinguished audience gasping but also many people tuning in to the BBC's live radio broadcast. But as he approaches the end of his assault, the speech suddenly dissolves into incoherence when he stumbles over a name - a name he normally takes such pains to avoid - that takes him back forty years to a special time and a special place.Summer in February is a disturbing and moving re-creation of a celebrated Edwardian artistic community enjoying the last days of a golden age soon to be shattered by war. As resonant and understated as The Go-Between, it is a love story of beauty, deprivation and tragedy.

Someone has stolen Patrick Balfour's identity. A successful headmaster of a London school, a regular broadcaster and a writer of historical novels, as well as having a fairly spicy private life, Balfour is the object of some unsurprising envy. Yet who would be so malicious as to commit identity fraud and frame Patrick as a thief and a paedophile, using his national insurance number and impersonating his handwriting? As Patrick is teased by a series of letters, it becomes apparent that his adversary is certainly better-read than him and he is sent off on a tense literary chase, picking up clues from Kafka's The Trial to R L Stevenson and to Joseph Clark, a 17th Century contortionist. Patrick's morale begins to collapse - the police don't believe him and his daughter rejects him. Desperate, he decides he must pursue his pursuer.

We are all caught up in our children's lives. We all remember our own schooldays and, as parents, we watch anxiously as our children go through it. As we look at the world of teaching from the outside we wonder not only what is going on but what we can do to help. Jonathan Smith, a born teacher and writer, takes us on his personal journey from his first days as a pupil through to the challenges of his professional and private life on the other side of the desk. He makes us feels what it is like to be a teacher facing the joys and the battles of a class. How do you influence a child? He describes how you catch and stretch their minds. What difference can a teacher make, or how much damage can he do? Should clever pupils teach themselves? What works in the classroom world and what does not? And while influencing the young, how do you develop yourself, how do you teach yourself to keep another life and find that elusive balance? This is a compelling and combative story, warmly anecdotal in approach, yet as sharp in its views of the current debates as it is sensitive in its psychological understanding. From the first page to the last, and without a hint of jargon, this inspiring book rings true.