H. S. Toshack

H. S. Toshack has lived and worked as an English teacher and educational consultant in the UK, the Caribbean, Africa, Thailand and the Middle East. He now lives and writes in Portugal.

His first three 'Paka Mdogo' stories are set in Africa, but they are coloured by his experience of people, animals and lives lived in all of those other places.

Second editions of the books have now been published on Amazon, together with a first edition of 'The Smile of the Tiger', set in Thailand.

'Sheena led me through all four books. It was as if she was telling her stories through me. That's why I've put her portrait on my profile page: she's my co-author.

'My favourite book in the series? Probably the first one, 'Paka Mdogo', since it took me so fully back to Africa in my imagination; but I have to say that 'The Meerkat Wars' is the most important, since it explores in very dramatic fashion the issue of conflict, and offers young readers reassurance in our troubled times that divisiveness can be resisted and harmony achieved through listening, talking and honest thinking.'

H.S. Toshack is also the principal author of 'The WordSmith Guides', designed to help senior secondary students prepare for external exams across a range of assessment systems. They include critical commentaries on Shakespeare’s major tragedies, and two handbooks providing extensive courses in the rhetorical analysis of both literary and non-literary writing.

The Shakespeare commentaries are now available in paperback: put H.S. Toshack in an Amazon Search Box.

The first four in a series of poems and photographs reflecting some of H.S. Toshack's travels - 'Poems and Places' - have recently been published on Amazon.

HST (as he prefers to be addressed) has also produced, with Mrs. Orwell’s permission, a dramatised version of 'Animal Farm', for use in schools (performed once in a week-long production but not yet published). ‘That was largely a matter of cutting and pasting,’ he says, ‘but it’s become an increasingly important story to be told by whatever means in these troubled times.’

‘Which kind of writing brings you most satisfaction?’ we asked this versatile author.

‘The kind that tries to open young and not so young minds to new ways of thinking – about life as well as literature. But I guess that’s all four.’