Throughout the 1990s, Deric Longden has shared his life with Aileen Armitage and four cats: Thermal, Tigger, Frink and shabby old Arthur. And the cats have found that sharing a life with Aileen can be a very painful business. She hardly ever trips over them these days, but they are always in danger of being mistaken for a cardigan, or being inadvertently locked away in the cellar.Ever since thermal came in from the cold to enter his life, Deric has seen his world increasingly taken ...

In 1990, with a bestselling book behind him, and spurred on by a marriage to the writer Aileen Armitage, Deric Longden took one of the most momentous decisions of his life and moved to a foreign country. Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, with its distinctive manners and customs and its wealth of remarkable characters, would surely provide him with all the material he needed for the book he was planning, one of the all-time classic of travel literature. But two years later, when he sat down to wr...

'A funny, sad, and above all, enormously inspiring story' Clare Francis, Action for M.E. In 1971 Deric Longden's wife Diana fell ill with the mysterious disorder known as ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis). She was unable to move without a wheelchair, and was in almost constant pain. Equally distressing, perhaps, was the fact that every doctor she saw was unable to diagnose what was wrong with her. Deric, devoting more and more time to looking after Diana, watched his business gradua...

Deric Longden had never thought of himself a cat lover, but from the moment he saw the tiny kitten sitting on an upturned bucket down in the garden he was hooked. Strictly speaking, the little cat belonged to the neighbours, but somehow when it began to rain it seemed only natural to bring him inside, and once there he slipped so easily into Deric’s and Aileen’s lives that there was an unspoken agreement that he had found his real home. Little did he know that he had entered the Longden wo...

50 amusing short stories for cat lovers by Emmy and BAFTA-winning author Deric Longden. Broadcaster and speaker, he has written many widely-acclaimed books The Cat Who Came in From the Cold, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Enough to Make a Cat Laugh, A Play On Words and Paws In the Proceedings. Each demonstrate his unique blend of humour, observation and his fun and adventures with his various adoptive cats. Tailpieces is a special personal collection of his favourite short stories and article...

'A lovely read.' - Good Housekeeping.'You know, Deric - ten minutes of this rain will do more good in half an hour than a fortnight of ordinary rain in a month.'Deric Longden's mum was a wonderfully endearing, eccentric lady whose passions ranged from pot plants and her beloved pussycats to Buttercup Syrup which she consumed in vast quantities. She also provided comfort, advice and her own particular brand of wisdom in the years after the death of his first wife, Diana....

Ever since Dame Thora Hird breathed life into the role of Deric Longden’s mother in @Wide Eyed and Legless’. She had been on at him to write a play based on the sequel, ‘Lost For Words’. ‘And don’t hang about, I’m eighty – three, you know.’ But life doesn’t run in straight lines for Deric. Apart form his duties as official guide dog to his blind wife, the writer Aileen Armitage, he is at the beck and call of three and a half cats, a somewhat bemused vole and a tap-dancing squi...

Deric Longden was best known for his books which touched millions in print and on screen, and which were critically acclaimed on both the UK and International stage. Many of the stories he told were drawn from his broadcasting days with BBC Radio Derby and BBC Radio Nottingham, where he enjoyed regular slots and a large audience of loyal listeners.These insights into Deric’s world are drawn from his original ‘Line Up’ Radio Derby scripts, which he often wrote the night before his F...