The Songs of Louis de Bernires - Vol. 1 - with The Bookshop Band. Louis de Bernires published his first novel in 1990 and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. But it was the publication of his fourth novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin which made him a household name, and an international best-seller. Less well-known is his that he is also a singer-songwriter playing the flute, mandolin and guitar. De Bernires says ""I was a teenager at a time when the only ways you could get a girlfriend were by either having a car, or playing the guitar, or preferably both. It was the heyday of the singer songwriter, and boys like me wanted to be Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Tom Paxton, Ralph McTell, and Leonard Cohen. There was no-one who didn't sing 'Suzanne', 'The Last Thing on My Mind', 'Blowing In The Wind', and 'The Streets of London"". I used to play in folk clubs, where the people hated you for being able to read music. I played (once) in what I think was the first punk band (Irreparable Brain Damage), and I tried to become a rock star in Ipswich."" ""Later, for about ten years, I was on the road performing instrumental music and poetry with a gang called The Antonius Players. The stage fright and the sheer frustration of endless days on the road made my head ring, and it was incompatible with being a good father. The fingers of my right hand stopped working, and I quit. Over the years I gradually got the hand working again, and then Ben and Beth of The Bookshop Band eavesdropped in the early morning as I played one of my oldest songs to myself, and thanks to them this album was conceived. If I were Californian I would be a believer in Angelic Intervention, and Ben and Beth would be the two tatterdemalion angels Id believe in.